The BDA’s Medals, Honours and Awards are designed to acknowledge the unsung heroes of our profession; those who uphold and improve the standards of dentistry and to members and non-members who have contributed to the advancement of the BDA or the profession.
The BDA have put some information below regarding the process which we hope you will find useful:
Who can be nominated?
Awards should recognise contemporaneous service, and we encourage nominations that celebrate the diversity of our membership, including cultural, geographical and gender representation as well as all career stages. We welcome nominations from academic, community, hospital or armed forces dentists. The Joy Harrild Award is designed to honour young dentists with 10 years of qualification. It is important to note that the standard of BDA awards is high and nomination forms should reflect this.
How do I nominate someone?
The nomination form (attached) is designed to help you show how your nominee has met the Awards criteria. It is important to complete as many sections as possible, providing detailed examples wherever you can. This helps us fully understand the impact of your nominee’s contributions and ensures they receive the recognition they deserve. Please use the links below to the sample form for each honour and award to give some guidance.
Awards criteria
Honours – President, Honorary Membership, Life Membership; Medals – Fellowship Medal, John Tomes Medal; Awards: Roll of Distinction, Award for Excellence, Joy Harrild Award. Each aims to honour service provided from different areas of dentistry – please ensure you look at the Awards’ criteria before nominating (also attached)
BDA membership
Unless the medal, honour or award is specifically open to individuals who are not BDA members or eligible for BDA membership, such as Honorary Membership and the Roll of Distinction, nominees are expected to be BDA members or to have had long-standing membership that has been given up for reasons such as retirement. Nominees for National President should be BDA members or hold Honorary Membership of the Association.
Level of information to provide
The covering letter of the nomination form (attached) provides detail on completing a nomination form and the process involved. It is important that nominations provide as much detail as possible about the nominee to help the Honours and Awards Committee make a fair decision. Nominators should not assume that the Committee will have existing knowledge of the nominee and so should provide comprehensive information about their career, contributions, and achievements.
Where the nominee is not aware of the nomination, we appreciate this can be difficult and so it is best to consult with a range of colleagues to put together as much information as you can.
The BDA staff are happy to provide advice on nominations and will request further information where nominations are not detailed enough, but nominators should not expect that staff will undertake additional research. The Committee will only be presented with the information provided by the nominator and that which is available from the BDA’s membership database (eg length of membership, previous medals, honours or awards received).
Handwritten nominations and signing nomination forms
Nominators are asked to fill in the nomination form electronically. Handwritten forms are not accepted. Signatures on nomination forms do not have to be handwritten; a typed ‘e-signature’ is perfectly acceptable. Scanning in nomination forms that have been hand-signed makes them difficult to process and this should be avoided where possible.
You can find all the information above on the BDA’s website here: and if you have any questions relating to the process please do not hesitate to contact our Honours and Awards secretariat, Alison Magee at alison.magee@bda.org.
Deadlines
The deadline for nominations is Friday 29 May 2026. Nominations for the Joy Harrild Award for Young Dentists should be submitted by Thursday 30 April 2026.
You will also find attached the report of the BDA Honours and Awards Committee, which sets out the activity of the Committee this year and the results of the 2025 awards.
