While a medical student in Bangalore, India, the simple idea of using school children to improve the local water supply started Yusuf on a career trajectory that has taken him to McMaster University in Canada, where he is Professor of Medicine, by way of Britain and the USA.
As a Rhodes scholar at Oxford studying with Peter Sleight and Richard Peto, Yusuf developed the fundamental concepts of trial design which would help facilitate the super-studies involving tens of thousands of participants. The three friends, together with Rory Collins, FESC, pioneered the concept meta-analysis.
A subsequent registrar's job at Harefield Hospital with Magdi Yacoub, FESC, provided a unique opportunity to study denervated and innervated hearts beating in the same patient. This project, which he undertook in his spare time, and his work in clinical trials ultimately led to a position at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, USA. Here, working as project officer, he led the SOLVD and DIG trials in heart failure. "The NIH gave me a fantastic opportunity to work with some of the best brains in the US and to concentrate on research full time for eight years," says Yusuf.
In family holidays with his wife and three children (now aged 24, 23 and 18), Yusuf felt drawn to the natural beauty of Canada, its "sensible" healthcare system, and the warmth of its people. In 1992 he was offered the position of head of cardiology at McMaster, a university renowned for the quality of its clinical research.
Since then Yusuf has helped establish the university as a world leader in clinical trials, and set up the Population Health Research Institute to co ordinate population studies, such as the INTERHEART study, the world's largest case control study of risk factors for MI conducted in 52 countries.
"The theme of all my research has been to reduce mortality and morbidity with simple inexpensive treatments," he says. "As a general rule, simple interventions have greater impact than more complex interventions, largely because they apply to millions of people, including individuals in both wealthy and poor countries".
An interest in ethnicity and cardiovascular disease is one legacy from his Indian roots, and he tries to maintain close links with Indian medicine through sabbaticals and exchange programmes with his alma mater, St John's Medical College in Bangalore. And he still works extensively in developing countries. "There is great beauty in health research, and when you make new discoveries which help people, it brings deep satisfaction and immense joy," he says.
CVD prevention in perspective: the personal view, 10:30 - 11:15, Room 1, 16 April 2011