The Inaugural Ronnie Fehily Medal Award is in honour of Ronnie (photo below), who was 62 years of age, when in 2011 she was diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma and sadly died three months later.
Suffice to say, Ronnie’s family, found it very difficult to access both the practical information and the emotional support they needed following Ronnie’s diagnosis and throughout her treatment. Following Ronnie’s passing her family came together and decided they were going to try and fill that gap, and in 2012 the Ronnie Fehily Foundation, also known as Brain Tumour Ireland was founded.
Brain Tumour Ireland has established the Ronnie Fehily Medal Award not only to honour the memory of Ronnie herself, but to honour her family for their tremendous work and dedication over the past almost 11 years to bring the charity to where it is today. Board directors will come and go, CEO’s will come and go but this award will ensure that the reason the charity was set up in the first place will never be forgotten.
We invited those at the earlier stages of their work in research to submit a 400 word abstract giving an overview of a brain tumour research project that they are involved in either currently or in the past, and to design this abstract in such a way as to be understood by a lay audience. It is worth noting that Ronnie herself was a pharmacist and her daughter Natasha told me she spent most of her time on the other side of the counter, making sure people understood the medications they were on, what they were taking them for etc. We like to think that Ronnie would approve of this award in her name.
We had a large number of submissions from right around the country and all of an extremely high standard. The winner of the inaugural Ronnie Fehily Medal Award is Mr. Florian Oswald, a final year student at the University of Stuttgart who is completing his Master’s Research Project at the Dept. of Physiology here at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Natasha Smith, Ronnie’s daughter, awarded Florian with the medal during our annual RCSI research update evening, part of our 2023 Awareness Week.
A huge congratulations to Florian, and thank you to everyone who applied. We look forward to more submissions and continuing the Ronnie Fehily Medal Award next year.
Fiona Keegan,
CEO, Brain Tumour Ireland
About Fiona:
Fiona Keegan was appointed as CEO of Brain Tumour Ireland in November 2022. Fiona had been the National Coordinator of Brain Tumour Ireland since March 2017. She has a background in psychotherapy and has worked for over 15 years in the voluntary sector, supporting vulnerable people and their families.
Fiona’s previous role involved working with a charity where she developed the support services available for people living with a chronic condition. Fiona’s primary role within Brain Tumour Ireland is to build on the work which has already started in providing first-class support services for people with a brain tumour and their families and carers.
