About Christiana Dinah

Christiana Dinah has built her career around a conviction that progress in retina should be judged not only by what clinicians can measure in the clinic, but by what patients are able to do in their everyday lives. As a medical retina specialist, she leads research in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR), and sickle cell retinopathy, with a particular emphasis on patient-centred functional outcomes, equitable access to clinical research, and improving care for underserved populations.

She also serves as Chair of the British & Eire Association of Medical Retina Specialists and has acted as Chief Investigator or Principal Investigator for more than 30 clinical trials spanning Phases 1 to 4. She also contributes to national guidance through expert roles on National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) committees, including work on diabetic retinopathy guidance and the appraisal of remote monitoring technologies for macular disease.

A common theme of Christiana’s work is her determination to ensure that research reflects the realities of patients’ lives. She is a strong advocate for inclusive, patient-centered trial design and for the development of outcome measures that capture more than changes on a visual acuity chart.

Christiana notes that the retina field has relied heavily on anti-VEGF therapy, while many of the underlying biological challenges of retinal disease remain unresolved. “We are currently in a holding pattern, with anti-VEGF therapies tiding us along for over two decades and various challenges keeping the field stagnant,” she explains. What gives her optimism is the growing combination of advanced imaging, deeper biological understanding, and the ambition to move towards genuinely disease-modifying treatment. Rather than managing the consequences of disease indefinitely, she hopes the field can begin to intervene more directly in the mechanisms that drive progression.

“There is also increasing awareness of the need to improve functional testing and patient-reported outcomes to understand how retinal disease affects the activities that matter to people in everyday life,” she explains. “The convergence of improved, potentially disease-modifying treatments with more meaningful outcome measures will give us an opportunity to design trials – and ultimately clinical services – that preserve not only letters on a chart, but independence, confidence, and quality of life.”

Christiana hopes to generate evidence that can refine functional endpoints across AMD and DR, and “move beyond an overreliance on best-corrected visual acuity by validating measures that better reflect the visual demands of daily living.” A second major priority is sickle cell retinopathy, where she wants to help establish consistent, high-quality care for people affected by the disease across the UK. “It is evident from the literature and inequity in access to high-quality care for people with sickle cell disease – including those living in high-income countries – that this is a disease that has been neglected for too long,” she says.

Addressing that neglect will require a stronger evidence base, more consistent pathways for screening and treatment, and interventions that prevent progression before severe complications develop. Christiana is particularly concerned by models of care that respond only after retinal damage has become advanced.

Christiana’s approach to research and leadership has been shaped by two particular mentors: Professors David Steel and Sobha Sivaprasad. She worked by Steel’s “relentless clinical curiosity” and his lesson that influential research need not be confined to a major academic institution “has profoundly shaped my own career and my determination to build high-quality research within a district general hospital setting,” she says.

As for Professor Sivaprasad, Christiana admires her intellectual openness, approachability, and willingness to acknowledge uncertainty even at the highest level of expertise. “She makes it acceptable to say, ‘I don’t know,’ however expert you may be, and then to pursue the answer with rigor.”

Away from ophthalmology, Christiana writes fiction and is fascinated by storytelling, character, and the ways people make sense of the world. She is an enthusiastic theatregoer and admirer of classic films, and says that in another life she might have become a film or theatre director. She is also a keen tennis spectator, enjoying the drama of live matches.