Professor Rodgers qualified in medicine and trained in public health and epidemiology and his career has focussed on clinical trials, public-private partnerships and innovation. This experience has included being an investigator on over fifty clinical trials in diverse areas including cardiovascular disease prevention and treatment, nutrition, exercise, addictions and mental health. Professor Rodgers was the Principal Author of the 2002 World Health Report, the main annual publication for WHO. Professor Rodgers also developed a world first text message based smoking cessation programme, with over 6,000 patients in clinical trials that demonstrated clinically important increase in quit rates. The service has been rolled out by Departments of Health in NZ, UK and India, with over 2 million users to date. Professor Rodgers led development of affordable cardiovascular combination pills (‘polypills’), which involved a public-private partnership with a leading generics manufacturer and a grant-funded international trial program. Professor Rodgers also co-founded and is Chief Medical Officer of an Australian company addressing the unmet need in developed and developing countries for affordable, novel cardiovascular combination therapies.