Marion Mafham

Marion Mafham is an associate professor working in the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidmiological Studies Unit (CTSU) at Oxford Population Health. Her work aims to improve health by generating reliable randomised evidence about the effects of interventions to treat and prevent common causes of death and disability, focusing on diabetes, cardiovascular and kidney diseases. She pioneers new trial methods to design large-scale streamlined randomised trials that produce reliable answers, including the use of healthcare systems data in clinical trials and direct-to-participant designs. She is module lead for the University of Oxford's MSc in clinical trials and co-leads the clinical trials program for Health Data Research UK.

Her recent clinical trials work includes the mail-based ASCEND study in 15,480 participants with diabetes, the ongoing 15,000 participant ORION-4 study in cardiovascular disease and she co-leads the ASCEND PLUS trial of oral semaglutide in type 2 diabetes. She leads the data linkage team for the RECOVERY trial assessing potential hospital treatments for COVID-19. Her research also uses healthcare systems data to generate real time insights into the impact of COVID-19 on NHS care pathways.

She studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (1992-1998) and completed an MD thesis at the CTSU (2003-2006). After completing her specialist training in Nephrology she returned to CTSU in 2013.