Session 168: RBMO Live 15: Fertility in Freefall

17th March, 3pm EST, 7pm UK, 8pm CET
NOTE TIME
Webinar kindly sponsored by RBMO

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Hosts: Prof. Nick Macklon and Prof. Bart Fauser

Presenters:

Prof. John Aitken: Declining global fertility and
our future dependence on ART.

Prof. Adam Balen: The role of Fertility Education in addressing falling fertility rates

Q and A

Prof. Nick Macklon

Prof. Nick Macklon is Group Medical Director of LWC, LEB and LSB.
He has held full professorships and departmental Cahir positions at the Universities of Utrecht, Southampton and Copenhagen. Widely published both papers and books. Former member of ESHRE Executive Committee and coordinator of ESHRE Special Interest Group in Reproductive Endocrinology. Recently chaired ESHRE Guide to Good Practice in RIF. He has been Associate Editor of Reproduction, HR and HRU and now co Chief editor of RBMO.

Prof. Bart Fauser

Bart CJM Fauser, MD, PhD, FRCOG, is a Professor Em. of Reproductive Medicine, Gynecologist, former Head of the Department for Reproductive Medicine and Gynecology and former Chair of the Division of Woman & Baby at the University of Utrecht and the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. 

He is the scientific director of the International Federation of Fertility Societies (IFFS), international member of the US National Academy of Medicine (NAM), member of the Academia Europea, Honorary member of European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), Fellow ad Eundum of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RCOG), Honorary member of the Middle East Fertility Society (MEFS), Night in the order of the Netherlands Lion, consultant and advisory board member of a multitude of companies. He is a past member of the board of the Dutch Medical Research Counsel (ZonMW), past chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) steering committee for infertility guidelines, past Editor-in-Chief of Reproductive Biomedicine Online (RBMO), and past Editor-in-Chief of Human Reproduction Update. 

He previously held posts as a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, San Diego; and visiting professorships at Stanford University School of Medicine (California, USA), Free University of Brussels (Belgium), University of Siena (Italy), University of Southampton (UK), and the University of Adelaide (Australia).

His major research interests include the pathophysiology of human ovarian function (especially PCOS, POI, and ovarian aging), ovarian stimulation, IVF and women’s health (healthy female aging). Professor Fauser published over 500 peer-reviewed scientific articles, Hirsch factor 119 (SCOPUS), and he is the No 3 in the 2025 Global Stanford/ Elsevier Top Scientist list in the field of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He acted as the editor of multiple textbooks, wrote chapters for all leading textbooks in Reproductive Medicine, lectured all around the world and his work has been widely covered in the national and international news media.

Prof. John Aitken

John Aitken is a reproductive biologist who, for the past 25 years, has been working at the University of Newcastle, NSW, initially, as Chair of Biological Sciences and, subsequently,  as Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Biotechnology & Development and Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Health and Medicine. He is currently Distinguished Emeritus Laureate Professor of Biological Sciences and Scientific Advisor to a biotechnology company, Memphasys. 

Prof. Adam Balen

Adam Balen is an NHS consultant at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, UK, with a personal Chair in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery. He is clinical lead of a large multidisciplinary reproductive medicine service, including paediatric & adolescent gynaecology. He has been interested in PCOS for many years and has been a member of the international consensus groups on its definition and management including the Global PCOS Guideline Group, published in 2018 and 2023. He is a member of the WHO Guideline Development Group on Infertility (since 2012) and was responsible for formulating the FIGO definition of disorders of ovulation (2022). 
Amongst numerous national and international roles over the last 30 years, Adam is a past Chair of the British Fertility Society (BFS) and the ESHRE SIG for Reproductive Medicine. He has had numerous roles for the RCOG, in a range of committees and sat on Council for 6 years;  he is the only person to have delivered 3 RCOG eponymous prize lectures and was awarded the RCOG Academic Prize in 2025. In 2025 he has also delivered the BFS Howard Jacobs Prize lecture and the British Society of Gynaecological Endoscopy (BSGE) Sir Alec Turnbull Prize Lecture. 
Adam co-founded the British Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology (BritSPAG) and teaches regularly on adolescent reproductive health. He founded the Fertility Education Initiative to improve education in schools on reproductive health. Adam has authored >300 papers (H index 84, >48,000 citations) and 16 books, including Infertility in Practice (5th edition 2022) and The Fertility Book - Your definitive guide to achieving a healthy pregnancy (2021), co-authored with his wife Grace Dugdale for people trying to conceive.