Training

Adam qualified from Bartholomew’s Hospital, University of London in 1983 and spent his training years in London, Africa and Oxford before moving to Leeds as a consultant in 1996. He was trained by a number of world renowned figures, including Professor Howard Jacobs and Professor Robert Edwards, who received the Nobel Prize for being the founding father of IVF and responsible for the first IVF baby in 1978, the year Adam started at medical school.

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Helping people to have families is the most rewarding job imaginable and the receiving cards of thanks through the years not only of babies born but also of children growing up is truly humbling.

Adam Balen

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Career

Adam is an international expert in all aspects of reproductive health and infertility and is the only UK clinician to be on the World Health Organisation Infertility Guideline Group. He has been interested in PCOS for many years and is a member of the international consensus groups on its definition and management, for which the latest guidelines were published in 2023. Adam is a past Chair of the British Fertility Society (BFS) and of the ESHRE (European) Reproductive Medicine Special Interest Group. He has also sat on the Council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG). He is a Trustee of the BFS and on the advisory boards of a various patient support organisations including the Fertility Alliance and Verity. Adam founded the Fertility Education Initiative to improve education in schools.

Specialities & Credentials

Adam is the most highly published clinician currently working in the reproductive medicine in the UK and has authored >280 scientific papers, which cover the whole range of reproductive health and fertility. He has also written 16 books, including Infertility in Practice (5th edition 2023), which is the best selling textbook on infertility and has been translated into a number of languages including Chinese. Adam is also passionate about pre-conception health and nutrition and together with his wife Grace Dugdale wrote The Fertility Book - Your definitive guide to achieving a healthy pregnancy (2021), for people trying to conceive. Adam has lectured around the world at all of the major scientific congresses and regularly appears in the press (tv, radio, newspapers) as a commentator on the latest developments in reproductive science.

Membership of Professional Bodies

Adam is part of the following: BFS, RCOG, FIGO, ESHRE, ASRM, CRE-PCOS, WHO

Links to published work

See Professor Adam Balen's CV for all his work.