Royal Society of Medicine & Harvard Club of the UK: Panel Discussion on Public Health with Dr Kari Nadeau from Harvard University

Professor Maggie Rae is former President of the Faculty of Public Health and current President of the RSM Epidemiology and Public Health Section.

A leading public-health expert, she runs the public-health training programme in the South West of England and works on programme development in the region. Professor Rae has been working in public health for nearly 40 years and has worked in local, regional and national roles with different national agencies.

Dr Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health where she is also the John Rock Professor of Climate Science and Population Studies. Dr Nadeau is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and works at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). She also runs a laboratory and has published over 400+ papers, many in the field of immunology, and allergies and asthma, and climate change solutions. For more than 30 years, she has devoted herself to understanding how environmental and epigenetic factors affect the risk of developing immune dysfunction. Her wet lab laboratory has been studying exposomics and solutions-facing research with policy-oriented outcomes.

Dr Nadeau started 4 biotech companies, co-started a sustainability seed grant programme, and works with the WHO and UN on several projects in environmental and global health. She is the author of The End of Food Allergy and the book is available in eleven languages. Dr Nadeau earned her MD/PhD from Harvard Medical School in 1995, completing her doctoral work in biochemistry, followed by a pediatric residency, and fellowship in Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, and then joined the Stanford faculty where she was the Naddisy Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics until 2022. She joined Harvard in January 2023. She is an adjunct Clinical Professor at Stanford in the Department of Pediatrics. She is part of the Harvard Medical Faculty Practice and practices Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology in children and adults at the BIDMC.

Professor Bola Owolabi (MRCGP, MFPH Hon, FRSPH) is Director of the National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme at NHS England (NHSE). Professor Owolabi works as a General Practitioner in the Midlands. Bola has particular interest in reducing healthcare inequalities through integrated care models, service transformation, and using data insights for quality improvement. She has spearheaded NHSE’s Core20PLUS5 approach to narrowing healthcare inequalities. Internationally, Bola was a member of the Danish Ambassador’s Tour De Health – a ten nation healthcare policy leaders’ summit. Additionally, she was the UK representative on the Commonwealth Fund / Academy Health Tour 2023, exploring equity in national health policy across the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. She was previously National Speciality Advisor for Older People and Integrated Person-Centred Care at NHSE, where she led the Anticipatory Care workstream of the National Ageing Well Programme. She collaborated with teams across NHSE and the Department of Health and Social Care as part of the Covid-19 pandemic response.

Bola is an alumna of Ashridge Executive Education / Hult International Business School and holds a Masters degree with distinction in Leadership (Quality Improvement). She also received an NHS Leadership Academy Award in Executive Healthcare Leadership for Clinicians. Bola is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Applied Health Research, College of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Birmingham. She is also a Vice President of the Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH).

William Roberts is the Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Public Health. Previously William has been a senior leader in the NHS across roles in public health, commissioning, strategy, transformation and planning. He is a registered nurse who has worked in both hospital and community services, and as a nurse specialist in tuberculosis and HIV.

William is a Non-Executive Director of Housing 21 and was previously Deputy Chair at Terrence Higgins Trust and a Non- Executive Director of POBL a Welsh housing and care provider. He is the Chair of the Swimming and Health Commission and is a member of Movember’s Global Men's Health Advisory Committee.

He brings a wealth of experience across public health and inequalities from the healthcare, charity sector, social care, housing, local government and further education.

Ms Paula del Rey Puech (MSc, MPH, DFPH) is a public health professional with experience across public, private, and non-profit sectors. Ms del Rey Puech's work spans health technology development, strategy design and implementation, and public policy. At FIND, she led initiatives in partnership with local and national health bodies to improve access to diagnostic technologies in Brazil, Georgia and Malaysia. She also supported key sanitation initiatives as part of the Mayor's Delivery Unit in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and shaped health strategies and operations while at McKinsey and Company in the USA and UK.

Currently, Ms del Rey Puech is undertaking the Public Health Specialty Training in London to deepen her understanding of public health systems at local, regional, and national levels. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and has held roles as a Public Health Registrar with the UK Health Security Agency and the London Borough of Waltham Forest Council, focusing on acute response to infectious diseases and community health improvement. She holds a Master’s in Bioengineering from IQS and MIT, and a Master of Public Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Paula also holds a leadership role with Women in Global Health Spain and is an active member of the Harvard alumni network.

Sarah took up the role of Director for Public Health for NHS England in November 2023 with a remit to work with systems, regions and NHSE alongside partners like DHSC, UKHSA, the Faculty of Public Health and Association of Directors of Public Health, to strengthen public health support on key health agendas, take pressure off health and care services through early intervention and improve outcomes for patients and residents.  Sarah also leads on professional development for Public Health within the NHS.

Sarah was in Greater Manchester for almost 7 years, part of the devolution team as exec lead for population health and commissioning overseeing a £30m programme of investment to improve health outcomes.  Sarah stepped up to Chief Officer through the pandemic and finished her time in GM as Deputy Chief Executive for the ICB.

Sarah was the Chief Officer at Haringey CCG for four years where she championed the development of new models of care for people in Haringey and changed the way key services are commissioned focussing on outcomes.  

Sarah was the first non-medical director of public health in London working in East London, then as DPH for both Islington PCT and council from 2003.