NICE Welcomes New Non-executive Directors To Its Board

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 29 Nov 2009 - 0:00 PST

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The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is pleased to announce the appointments of two new non-executive members to its Board. David Hunter joins as a Public Health Member and Linda Seymour as a Lay Member.

David Hunter specialises in public health policy and practice research and has been Professor of Health Policy and Management at Durham University since 2000 where he is director of the Centre for Public Policy and Health in the School of Medicine and Health and a Wolfson Fellow in the Wolfson Research Institute. He is Deputy Director of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) Centre for Translational Research in Public Health and is also co-leading with the Improvement Foundation and the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) several Leadership for Improving Health and Wellbeing Programmes across England.

Among his previous posts, David was Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Leeds (1989 to 1999), and was Director of the Nuffield Institute for Health at Leeds for most of this time. He was also Chair of the UK Public Health Association between 2004 and 2009. David is an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. David's other, unpaid, ministerial appointments are his membership of the Health Reforms Evaluation Panel (2008 to present) and the Leadership Governance Board (2009 to present), both of which are within the Department of Health.

Linda Seymouris Head of Policy at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (SCMH) in which role she works with the staff team providing analysis and support to the organisation about mental health policy and other public policies as they affect the lives of, and services for people with mental health problems. For more than twenty years Linda has worked extensively in health promotion and public health. She has worked in tobacco control at Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in London (1980-85) and at the Health Education Council (HEC) (1985-88). She was a member of the national research team (1994-99) evaluating the Health Education Authority's Health at Work in the NHS programme. She is an experienced trainer and worked for five years with the Public Health Resource Unit (PHRU) at Oxford Health Authority delivering workshops on critical appraisal skills, assessing the rigour and reliability of quantitative and qualitative research. After completing a Masters Degree in Health Studies from Brighton University in 1998 she worked as a Research Fellow in Health and Social Policy at the University's Health and Social Policy Research Centre. Linda is currently an Honorary Research Fellow on the Research Committee of the British Occupational Health Research Foundation, part of the Faculty of Occupational Health Medicine.

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, Chairman of NICE, said: 'I am delighted that David Hunter and Linda Seymour will be joining the Board of NICE. Both have a wealth of experience in the wider public health sector and both have strong representative skills and valuable networks amongst non-medical public health stakeholders and staff. The work of NICE in this area will be greatly enhanced accordingly.'

The remuneration for each of these posts is £7,882 per annum. Both appointments, which are for a four-year term, were made by the Appointments Commission, the independent organisation responsible, on behalf of the Secretary of State for Health, for appointing chairs and non-executive directors to NHS organisations. The appointments have been made in accordance with the Commissioner for Public Appointments Code of Practice. All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in the selection process. However, in accordance with the original Nolan recommendations, there is a requirement for appointees' political activity (if any declared) to be made public. Neither of the new Board members is engaged in political activity.

Source
NICE