Steve Collins (doctor)

Collins is from the United Kingdom and lives in Ireland.{{cite web|last=Barry|first=Owen|title=Dr. Steve Collins – Revolutionising the way we respond to malnutrition|website=create: brand consultants - Dublin, Ireland|date=2016-07-22|url=https://create.ie/dr-steve-collins/|access-date=2025-04-21}} He has an MBBS in medicine from St Bartholomew's Hospital in London (1989), a BSc in Philosophy and Anthropology from University College London, and an MD clinical doctorate in nutrition from the University of London in 2001.{{cite web|title=Ashoka Fellow Steve Collins|website=Ashoka|url=https://www.ashoka.org/en-us/fellow/steve-collins|access-date=2025-04-21}} While he was in medical school, he traveled through the Congo, Chad, and Uganda during wartime, witnessing famine conditions.{{cite news |last1=Barlass |first1=Tim |title=Bart's Angela Amid All This Suffering |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/evening-standard-steve-collins-muganga/170791731/ |access-date=21 April 2025 |work=Evening Standard |location=London, England |page=16}}

Collins' first work was in refugee re-feeding centers in Somalia. He saw issues with both nutrition approaches and failures in procedures and strategies in place to help the starving. He saw that people collecting in feeding centers was a disease risk and parents couldn't be away from work for too long, so he started a program where people would be given food to bring back to their communities. He further refined and studied this idea and in 1998, developed the Community based Therapeutic Care model, a decentralized model now called the community based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) model.{{cite web|title=Steve Collins|website=Worth Magazine|date=2013-06-03|url=https://worth.com/person/steve-collins/|access-date=2025-04-21}}

The CMAM model incorporates ready to use foods, a standard accepted by the World Health Organization. He did CMAM work in Ethiopia, setting up community-based treatment programs, a process which reduced mortality to four percent.{{cite web|title=Collins helped transform nutrition in famine countries|website=Irish Examiner|date=2010-12-09|url=https://www.irishexaminer.com/farming/arid-20138815.html|access-date=2025-04-21}} The project used Plumpy’Nut, as well as simple screening methods for child malnutrition and was first tested in Ethiopia.{{cite web|title=How a simple peanut paste became a humanitarian revolution|website=Concern Worldwide|date=2024-11-21|url=https://www.concern.net/news/plumpy-nut-rutf-humanitarian-revolution|access-date=2025-04-21}} The UN and the World Health Organization endorsed the project and it was expanded to Somalia and the Sudan.{{cite news |last1=Susman |first1=Tina |title=Starvation Stalks Somalia Adults, Sometimes it Overtakes Them |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/syracuse-herald-journal-steve-collins-so/170791410/ |access-date=21 April 2025 |work=Syracuse Herald-Journal |date=December 16, 1992 |page=40}}

Collins is one of the two founders of the companies Valid International and Valid Nutrition with Paul Murphy.{{cite web|title=Changing Business Models to Change the World|website=MIT Sloan Management Review|date=1970-01-01|url=https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/changing-business-models-to-change-the-world/|access-date=2025-04-21}} The company worked to create and test an amino-acid-enhanced, plant-based ready-to-use therapeutic food. He believes that solutions to global poverty have to be both aid and business driven, to encourage businesses to provide "attractive nutrition" that can use the products of small local farmers.{{cite web|title=Dr. Steve Collins (Valid Nutrition)|website=YouTube - UCCIreland|date=2024-03-06|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjvRtCRegTI|access-date=2025-04-21}}

Collins is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Child Health in London. His research has been published in Nature and The Lancet.{{cite journal|last=Collins|first=Steve|last2=Dent|first2=Nicky|last3=Binns|first3=Paul|last4=Bahwere|first4=Paluku|last5=Sadler|first5=Kate|last6=Hallam|first6=Alistair|title=Management of severe acute malnutrition in children|journal=The Lancet|publisher=Elsevier BV|volume=368|issue=9551|year=2006|issn=0140-6736|doi=10.1016/s0140-6736(06)69443-9|pages=1992–2000}}

In 2021, he co-founded Aronia Ireland to develop and market polyphenol-rich supplements to improve metabolic health and prevent chronic illness; the company released the PhyterBerry range of aronia supplements onto the Irish market in 2022.{{cite web |url=https://aroniaireland.com/about-us/ |title=About |author= |date=2024 |publisher=Aronia |access-date=January 11, 2024}}

In 2001, he received an MBE for his services to humanitarianism. In 2010 was elected a Senior Fellow of Ashoka.

Collins became an Irish national in 2020 and now lives with his wife and three childen in West Cork, running a regenerative organic farm.{{cite news |last=Wheeler |first=Sam |date=2018 |title=From famine-stricken war zones to farming pedigree Dexter cattle in West Cork |url=https://www.independent.ie/farming/agri-business/from-famine-stricken-war-zones-to-farming-pedigree-dexter-cattle-in-west-cork/37211517.html |work=Irish Examiner |access-date=January 11, 2024}}{{cite news |last=Allen |first=Caroline |date=2023 |title=Cork couple cuts back Dexter herd to focus on aronia berries |url=https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/cork-couple-cuts-back-dexter-herd-to-focus-on-aronia-berries/ |work=Agirland |access-date=January 11, 2024}}

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Category:1962 births

Category:Living people

Category:Social entrepreneurs