Peter Tugwell had the right cosmopolitan outlook to lead the international campaign by the BMJ and partners to promote academic medicine. He was born in Egypt; was raised in India, Germany, and Hong Kong; trained in England and Nigeria; and is now based in Canada, having spent sabbaticals as a visiting professor in the United States and Australia. And if attending 14 schools in 13 years while travelling with his parents (officers in the British army) wasn't enough international exposure, Tugwell has ventured all over the map in his lifelong commitment to health equity (in the last month alone to India, Washington, New Orleans, Italy, and Australia), in his effort to use the “skills of clinical epidemiology to make a difference.”

He is now a professor of medicine in Ottawa and holds a Canada research chair in health equity as director of the Centre for Global Health at the University of Ottawa's Institute for Population Health. His career has covered the three activities of academic medicine: clinical care, research, …