Geof Rayner PhD was the first chair of the UK Public Health Association and board member of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. He has been a consultant to the WHO and to government departments in the UK. He is currently a member of expert advisors group on obesity and working on a EU- funded 28 country project examining the respective roles of food industry, state and civil society on counteracting population weight gain. His new book, with Tim Lang, Ecological Public Health: Reshaping the Conditions of Good Health, is published by Earthscan, and is available for preorder on Amazon or bookshops.


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Jo Webber has worked in a number of roles at the NHS Confederation over the past seven years. Prior to this, she has extensive experience in the NHS, primarily in community health services, ending up as a Clinical Services Director in a PCT. Jo is a community nurse by background, but has also worked within the pharmaceutical industry and as a self-employed researcher. Her policy areas at the Confederation, apart from her role as Director of the Ambulance Service Network, include community health services, children's policy, older people and adult social care, public health and integration and partnership working. Jo is also a trustee of the Burdett Trust, which helps to support nursing research and development.

Presentation: A practical perspective on public health policy

With the Health and Social Care Bill making its way through parliament, as well as new strategies for public health, social care, and mental health, these are times of considerable change. This presentation will consider how policy and strategy can be put into practice, with an emphasis on the need for joint working.

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Jon Scholefield started working with Pfizer in 2008 as a consultant before joining Pfizer UK permanently in 2010 as a member of the Leadership Team for the Established Products Business Unit.

He is responsible for the development of business operations for commercial activities, supply chain and marketing of Pfizer's post-patent portfolio in the UK. He is also Head of Pfizer's Vascular Health Check Service.

Jon began his professional career with Accenture, the IT and business consultancy, during which time he worked with a variety of organisations from the public and private sectors. After four years at Accenture, he relocated to Chile to launch and manage an e-commerce business. Jon returned to the UK working as an independent business consultant before joining Pfizer.

Jon has a first-class degree in Engineering and an MA from Cambridge University.

Presentation: Pharmacy's role in public health – partnership for the benefit of all

Why pharmacy has a crucial role to play in public health and why partnerships between pharmacies, GPs, commissioners and industry are not only beneficial to all parties (most importantly including patients), but are also essential to the NHS as it evolves.

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John Wilderspin has over 25 years' experience in healthcare management, and has held senior roles in a number of NHS organisations. Prior to joining the DH in his current role, he was a PCT Chief Executive, firstly as Joint CEO of two PCTs in Hampshire, and then from 2006 with NHS West Sussex, the fourth largest PCT in the country. From 2000-2005 he held a number of roles with both the NHS Modernisation Agency, where he led three national service improvement programmes, and with DH,where he was senior member of the performance team. During the 1990s John was Chief Executive of an acute hospital trust in Essex for six years.

Presentation: Collaboration for health and wellbeing

Health and wellbeing boards aim to bring together NHS commissioners, councils and patient champions, to join up the public health agenda with the wider work of the NHS, social care and children's services. Shadow boards have already been established in many councils, with the ambition for all local authorities to have these in place by April 2012.

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Rowena Merritt has worked in the social marketing field since 1999. She currently works as the Research Manager at The NSMC. Before managing the research programme, she led on Local Practitioner development where she set up the award-winning National Demonstration Site scheme, funded by the Department of Health. As part of the scheme, she managed 10 social marketing projects, looking at a variety of public health issues from breastfeeding and sexual health screening to child nutrition and breast cancer.

Prior to this, she worked as the Social Marketing and Health Related Behaviour Manager in the Public Health unit within the Department of Health. Rowena graduated in 2001 from Imperial College with a first in Business Studies. She also has a DPhil from the University of Oxford. She has published widely and her new book is published in October 2011. She is also an editor of the internal journal Social Marketing Quarterly.

Presentation: Encouraging behaviour change

There is a significant drive to give local communities the capacity and confidence to try out and evaluate a behavioural approach to sustainable health improvement. The recent 'Applying behavioural insight to health' paper sets out the importance of behaviour in policymaking, and how behavioural science insights can be applied to health.

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Jackie Davidson is an Associate Director of Public Health at NHS South East London (Greenwich) and is responsible for overseeing a major programme of work aimed at developing a more systematic, population-sized approach to primary and secondary prevention in primary and community care. She is involved in a number of prevention work streams including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and COPD.

Jackie commenced her career in 1996 undertaking a Bachelor of Nursing and District Nursing degree. After three years' district nursing, she entered into management and undertook an MBA at Henley Management College. She has since held a number of senior posts within community and primary care organisations. She was Director of Elderly & Intermediate Care, then Borough Director in Lambeth, and then worked at Lewisham PCT in a role as Director of Clinical Leadership and Quality/Nurse Executive. After living in New Zealand for five years, she returned to the UK and joined Greenwich.

Jackie has extensive experience both in both primary and community care with a particular focus on project and change management approaches to service development; and clinical engagement.

Presentation: Developing systematic, population-sized approaches to primary and secondary prevention in primary care

Greenwich Public Health (NHS South East London) aims to significantly improve the health outcomes and reduce health inequalities within Greenwich so that local people can live longer, happier lives, benefiting from the same opportunities for good health as the rest of the country. Creating population-sized programmes that will improve health and reducing the variations that exist between providers is central to their delivery.

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Vernon Herbert currently heads up the London Healthy Urban Development Unit (HUDU), which works on behalf of the 31 London NHS Primary Care Trusts on connecting the planning and health agendas in the context of population growth and change in London. The Unit leads and advises on a range of health and spatial planning policy and implementation issues – from LDF Core Strategies and social infrastructure planning to assessing and providing for the health impacts of specific developments. HUDU publishes a variety of guidance and toolkits, such as the HUDU model. It also helps shape policy at a strategic and national level .

Vernon has a multidisciplinary professional and management background and has held a number of senior management positions within both the public and private sectors. These include Interim Director of Growth and Regeneration at Harlow, Deputy Director of Environment and Planning at the City of Westminster and senior positions with the Amey Group, Interserve, Tribal Group and, most recently, as a Director of JVM . He has wide experience of public sector planning and delivery as well as the broader aspects of urban planning, development, regeneration and management. He began his career as a planning and transportation graduate trainee at the Greater London Council and is qualified as a town planner.

Presentation: Building healthier communities

The NHS London Healthy Urban Development Unit (HUDU) exists to promote health improvement and the narrowing of health inequalities in London through pursuing the alignment of health and planning strategies and by facilitating effective engagement between the health and planning sectors and access to modern healthcare.

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Oswin Baker, rockpool's founder, has been researching people's experiences of service delivery for nearly two decades.

His interest in public health arose at Ipsos MORI, where Oswin saw the disconnect between local government and the NHS. Some people were simply falling through the net.

As head of research at the National Treatment Agency and more recently at Dr Foster Intelligence, Oswin continued to seek ways of bridging the public health fault line. He set up rockpool earlier this year, a new network of research associates with decades of expertise in healthcare, local government, marketing, analytics, communications and community engagement.

This year, Oswin has worked with the LGA to evaluate how councils tackle smoking and with Land Use Consultants to help councils address public health issues without reinventing the wheel.

Presentation: The public health fault line

Local authorities haven't truly managed public health since the 1970s. The transfer of responsibilities could therefore be a daunting prospect for many, with complex political decisions needed locally as to where to focus and how to do it. This talk will explore the cultural fault line running through public health and set out some simple ways of bridging it.

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Paul Stonebrook joined the Department of Health in1995 from the private sector, with a background in regulatory affairs. He has worked in the area of physical activity within the Health Improvement Directorate since 2002 and leads for the Department on adult physical activity policy.

Presentation: Practical approaches to developing the physical activity care pathway

The Department of Health's 'Let's Get Moving' (LGM) programme is designed to assist practitioners in guiding adults aged 16-74 towards gradually becoming more active, for the prevention and management of chronic disease. Many PCTs are already commissioning LGM, and the future offers further possibilities.

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Prior to joining the StreetGames national team, Paul Jarvis spent four years working on Physical Activity Policy & Promotion at the Department of Health. He is Vice Chair of the World Health Organisation's Healthy City Partnership in Brighton & Hove, and a Director of Brighton Carnival. He was a founding member of the national Physical Activity Alliance, and has also worked for Sport England and the Arts Council on physical activity promotion.

StreetGames is the UK's leading charity for sport in disadvantaged communities, where children are still only half as likely to be taking part in sport as their better-off peers. Inactivity has an impact on health and Paul's job is to plan, implement and evaluate projects that will improve health in disadvantaged areas. StreetGames currently has 120 projects nationwide, and 137,810 participants since 2006 who, between them, have made 1.4m attendances at 'doorstep' sports sessions run by StreetGames coaches and volunteers.

Presentation: Improving health and wellbeing within disadvantaged areas

StreetGames projects are providing an effective means of improving health and wellbeing and tackling health inequalities within disadvantaged areas by encouraging more young people to get involved in sport and physical activity, keeping them coming back, and supporting them on a pathway to sustained behaviour change.

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