Ian Darnton-Hill was born on 2 May 1946 in Adelaide, South Australia. He has professional qualifications in medicine, anaesthetics, nutrition and dietetics, and public health. Beginning as a rural doctor in Australia, his early career led him to the Asia Pacific region where he has worked in Papua New Guinea as a medical officer, Bangladesh on the national vitamin A deficiency and blindness programme as Country Director with Helen Keller International, Clinical Epidemiologist in noncommunicable diseases with WHO in Fiji, then to the Nutrition Sector of the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific in Manila, and, out of Washington DC, on global micronutrient malnutrition.

Notably, as Western Pacific WHO Regional Adviser in Nutrition from 1990-1995 he played a visionary, cohesive and progressive role in the improvement of nutritional in the elderly. Currently, he is the Project Director for OMNI (Opportunities for Micronutrient Intervention), funded by the Office of Population, Health and Nutrition of USAID in Washington, developed to work globally in the prevention and control of micronutrient deficiencies and consequent disease, and emphasizing particularly the deficiencies of iodine, iron and vitamin A.

He is well positioned to make even further significant contributions to nutrition and health.

The Asia Pacific Clinical Nutrition Society Award is made, each year to that person who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to the nutritionally related well-being and health of peoples in the Asia Pacific Region.