About us

Professor Sir Patrick Vernon OBE FRHistS is a nationally recognised campaigner, cultural historian, author, broadcaster and public leader with over 30 years of experience championing racial equality, health equity, social justice, cultural heritage and community empowerment.

Awarded a Knighthood in the 2026 King’s Birthday Honours for services to racial equality, Sir Patrick is widely recognised as one of Britain’s leading advocates for Black British history and tackling structural inequalities. He is best known as the architect of the campaign for a national Windrush Day and founder of the award-winning 100 Great Black Britons campaign.

Sir Patrick is currently Chair of the NHS Race and Health Observatory Advisory Board, Pro-Chancellor for Health at the University of Wolverhampton, and UK South Representative to the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council. These three leadership roles reflect his longstanding commitment to tackling health inequalities, strengthening education and community leadership, and building international partnerships between Britain, Jamaica and the wider Caribbean diaspora.

As Chair of the NHS Race and Health Observatory Advisory Board, he provides strategic advice and leadership to support the Observatory’s work in addressing racial inequalities in health and healthcare. As Pro-Chancellor for Health and Honorary Professor of Cultural Heritage and Community Leadership at the University of Wolverhampton, he supports the University’s engagement with health systems, communities, public policy and the wider challenges of improving population health.

In January 2026, Sir Patrick was appointed UK South Representative to the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council, working alongside the UK North Representative to strengthen relationships between the Jamaican Government and diaspora communities across the United Kingdom. His work focuses on health, education, cultural heritage, youth engagement, economic development and international collaboration. He is also an advocate for reparative justice and greater recognition of the historical and contemporary contributions of African and Caribbean communities.

His other leadership responsibilities include Chair of Hackney Thinking Spaces Community Advisory Board, Chair of the City and Hackney Anti-Racism and Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework Sub-Committee at East London NHS Foundation Trust, Convenor of the Windrush 100 Network and Chair of the Windrush Memorial Anchor Foundation. He is also a Trustee of British Future.

Previously, Sir Patrick served as Chair of NHS Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board, where he championed population health, community engagement and action on health inequalities. He was also Independent Chair of Walsall Together Partnership Board and held national leadership roles with Healthwatch England and the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch.

His extensive NHS and public sector experience includes serving as a Non-Executive Director of Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. Earlier in his career, he was a senior civil servant at the Department of Health, working on public health, inequalities and community engagement, and was seconded to the Local Government Association as an adviser on health inequalities.

He has held senior roles across mental health, public health and community development, including with MIND, Brent Health Action Zone, the Afiya Trust, Black Thrive and the Centre for Ageing Better. He was also a Hackney councillor from 2006 to 2014, chairing the Council’s Health Scrutiny Committee.

As a pioneering campaigner for Black British history and heritage, Sir Patrick founded Every Generation Media and launched the 100 Great Black Britons movement, helping to bring overlooked Black historical figures and achievements into mainstream education and public awareness.

His campaign for national Windrush Day contributed to the Government’s official recognition of 22 June as an annual day of commemoration and celebration in 2018. He continues to campaign for justice for those affected by the Windrush Scandal, fair compensation, citizenship rights and recognition of the Windrush Generation’s contribution to Britain.

Sir Patrick is the co-author, with Dr Angelina Osborne, of 100 Great Black Britons (2020) and co-editor, with Dr Yansie Rolston, of Black Grief and Healing (2024), exploring the intersections of racism, grief, trauma, resilience and healing.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Clore Fellow and a Winston Churchill Fellow. He received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Wolverhampton in 2018 and was awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to tackling health inequalities among ethnic minority communities.

Sir Patrick is Patron of the African Caribbean Community Initiative (ACCI), Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre and the Enfield Caribbean Association. His work has been recognised by British Vogue, the Powerlist and the Health Service Journal.

Through his leadership, writing, broadcasting and campaigning, Sir Patrick continues to connect history, health, heritage and human rights, advocating for institutional accountability, stronger communities and a more equitable society.

His work is driven by a lifelong commitment to ensuring that the histories, experiences and contributions of Black communities are recognised, valued and reflected in the institutions and policies that shape our collective future.

With over 20 years of NHS Board experience, Marie is currently the Chair of the NHS North East London ICS, former Chair of the NHS Race and Health Observatory and an Associate NED for the UK Health Security Agency.  She is also a Commissioner on the IPPR Commission on Health and Prosperity. Prior to this, Marie chaired mental health and commissioning organisations with budgets up to £3bn.  Her first NED role was as Vice Chair of an acute Trust.

Regionally, Marie is Co-Chair of the London People Board and a member of the Greater London Authority’s London Health Board.  Internationally, she has worked with the Institute of Healthcare Improvement to deliver workshops on the Board’s role in quality improvement.  Marie’s background is in local government and the voluntary sector, with particular experience in social justice, regeneration and equity.  Marie’s contribution to the NHS was recognised through the award of her CBE and her contribution to her local community, where she is still trustee of 2 Charities, was recognised by the award of Freedom of the Borough.  More recently in 2023, Marie received the award of Honorary Doctor of Health Sciences from the Anglia Ruskin University (ARU).  Marie was awarded a Damehood in the King’s 2025 New Year’s Honours.

John joined the Nuffield Trust as Director of Research and Chief Economist in 2016 following his position at the King’s Fund as Chief Economist, and senior lectureships in health economics at the Universities of East Anglia and Birmingham. After his masters in health economics at the University of York in 1980, he worked in the NHS for seven years in Birmingham and London. John has published widely on a range of health care finance and economic issues in books, academic journals, reports, magazines, and newspapers.

He is a regular columnist for the British Medical Journal. As well as his former post at the Nuffield Trust, John is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, City University, London, and at the Institute of Global Innovations at Imperial College London.

Dr Shabna Begum is CEO at the Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading race equality think tank. She joined the Trust in 2021 and worked her way up to become Director of Research, before taking on her current interim leadership role. Her work has been at the heart of all the Runnymede Trust’s recent projects, including research on police in schools, the cost-of-living crisis, and the experiences of women of colour in the workplace.

Shabna has a PhD from Queen Mary University on the institutional and popular racism faced by Bengali migrant communities in 1970s London, centred around themes of home and belonging. She recently published her first book, From Sylhet to Spitalfields, on the topic. Prior to joining the Runnymede Trust, Shabna was a teacher for over 20 years, most of that at a school in Hackney, east London where she was head of department and previously led on building an anti-racist school.

Kevin has worked in a variety of public health roles across government and academia in the UK and internationally. He is currently the London Regional Director in the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities within the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Within this role, he is also the statutory public health advisor to the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority and the Regional Director of Public Health for NHS England – London. He is also the government’s Chief Advisor on HIV, Chair of the HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group for England, and President of the UK Faculty of Public Health.

Previously, Kevin was the London Regional Director of Public Health at Public Health England (PHE). Upon appointment in spring 2020, he oversaw the national PHE review of disparities in risks and outcomes of COVID-19 which included an epidemiological study. In addition, he led a process of extensive stakeholder engagement with black and minority ethnic communities and a rapid literature review.

In November 2020, Kevin was named by Powerlist as the second most influential black person in Britain for his work leading the fight against COVID-19 and his leadership on inequalities.

Prior to starting as London’s Regional Director, he held a joint position as Strategic Director of Place and Wellbeing and Director of Public Health at London Borough of Southwark, and Senior Advisor, Public Health England. In this role, he led the council’s planning, regeneration, community engagement and public health portfolios driving inclusive regeneration, digital public health, asset-based community development and promoting health in all policies – working in partnership with NHS.

Professor Fenton was previously PHE’s National Director for Health and Wellbeing leading national prevention programmes including screening for cancer, NHS Health Checks, obesity, mental health, e-cigarettes and tobacco harm reduction, HIV, sexual and reproductive health. He also established and led PHE’s Health Equity programme focused on addressing the social determinants of health and promoting place-based approaches to health improvement.

Stephani is a Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology leading the Health Inequalities Research Group at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She has over 25 years of experience delivering interdisciplinary health inequalities research with an emphasis on race at the intersection of other social identities. She works across sectors, locally and nationally, and has published extensively on: inequalities in mental health and health services; discrimination and other forms of social adversity; community mental health; and multimorbidity. Professor Hatch brings a range of research and leadership experience. From 2008 to 2015, she was Co-Principal Investigator for the NIHR and ESRC-funded Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre South East London Community Health (SELCoH) study, a psychiatric and physical morbidity study set in the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth.

In 2017, she received a Wellcome Trust Investigator’s Award to lead the Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences in Health Services (TIDES) study, a mixed-methods programme of work that expanded in 2020 with ESRC funding to utilise a participatory framework to identify processes through which racial and ethnic inequalities in mental health and occupational outcomes are produced, maintained and resisted in the context of Covid-19. Professor Hatch also currently co-leads the Marginalised Communities and Mental Health programme within the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health focused on advancing research with communities that have often been ignored, to examine and disrupt structures maintaining social inequities in mental health, with an emphasis on race within an intersectionality framework. Professor Hatch integrates collaborative approaches to knowledge production and dissemination, action and outreach in training and research through the Health Inequalities Research Network (HERON), which she founded in 2010. She also leads equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives in higher education, and has national and international advisory roles in health and volunteer and community sectors.

Dr Lade Smith CBE is the former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (June 2023 – June 2026). A consultant at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, she has pioneered innovative clinical services, including a ’one stop shop’ for medication review and physical health in severe mental illness, and has been recognised as a BMA Pioneer and RCPsych Psychiatrist of the Year.

Dr Smith has over 70 publications. Her research focuses on the hormonal and reproductive effects of antipsychotic medications, mental health inequality, and improving outcomes for minoritised groups.

As former Clinical Director for the RCPsych National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health and a core member of the Independent Mental Health Act Review (October 2017-December 2018), chaired by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, she has shaped national policy and championed key recommendations to address disparities in mental health care. Key recommendations included those aimed at improving outcomes for Black people with mental health problems.  Lade was a co-organiser of the RCPsych International Congress from 2017-2023.

In 2019, Dr Smith was awarded a CBE for services to forensic intensive psychiatric care. The first Black female President of any of the world’s Medical Royal Colleges, Dr Smith has also been recognised in the Health Service Journal’s influential leaders lists.

Lade’s commitment to improving outcomes for people with mental illness is exemplified by her pioneering of the Prague Agreement, a coalition of all 147 psychiatric associations, together with mental health charities from across the world, working with the World Bank on global investment for mental health and attending the United Nations Global Assembly 80 to discuss this.

Lade enjoys walking along the Thames, reading, theatre and Zumba.

( board membership role started,  1 July 2021) 

The Rt. Hon. Professor the Lord Ajay Kakkar PC is Professor of Surgery, University College London, Chairman of UCLPartners Academic Health Science Partnership and Director of the Thrombosis Research Institute London.

Lord Kakkar completed his medical degree from King’s College London and received his PhD from Imperial College London. His research interests include the prevention and treatment of venous and arterial thromboembolic disease and cancer-associated thrombosis.

Lord Kakkar has created a Life Peer in 2010 and sits on the crossbenches of the House of Lords. He was Chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission from 2013–2018. He is Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission and was appointed a member of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council in 2014. He serves as Chairman of The King’s Fund and Chairman of UK Biobank.

Donna is the Chair of the Runnymede Trust and a Trustee of the Burdett Trust for Nursing. She is a Non-Executive Director at East London Foundation Trust and the Royal Free Hospital London.

Donna maintains a clinical role as a director of nursing at Zentar healthcare. She advises on health policy and health issues to a number of organisations, including Global Health Partnerships and private health related organisations. She was a former Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) during the Covid 19 pandemic, advocating for the nursing profession and patients. Donna has extensive NHS experience with Director responsibilities for delivering strategy, formulating policy and promoting good health and care practice both across the UK and internationally. She has worked in many aspects of healthcare provision as a clinical leader, teacher, commissioner and deliverer of operational services. Donna served as nurse/child health assessor to the Victoria Climbié Inquiry and advised the Prime Minister’s Commission on the future of Nursing and Midwifery in 2010. She has sat on Better Births Improving Outcomes of Maternity Services in England in 2016. She was made a DBE in 2008 for services to nursing.

Professor of Epidemiology at University College London. He is the author of The Health Gap: the challenge of an unequal world (2015) and Status Syndrome: how your place on the social gradient directly affects your health (2004).  Professor Marmot held the Harvard Lown Professorship for 2014-2017 and is the recipient of the  Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health 2015. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from 18 universities. 

Marmot has led research groups on health inequalities for more than 40 years.  He was Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), which was set up by the World Health Organization in 2005, and produced the report entitled: ‘Closing the Gap in a Generation’ in August 2008.  At the request of the British Government, he conducted the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post-2010, which published its report ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’ in February 2010.  The follow-up Marmot Review: 10 years on was released in February 2020. This was followed by the European Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide, for WHO Euro n 2014.  

He chaired the Breast Screening Review for the NHS National Cancer Action Team and was a member of The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health.  Many decades ago, he set up the Whitehall II Studies of British Civil Servants, investigating explanations for the striking inverse social gradient in morbidity and mortality, which is still ongoing.  He also set up the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and is engaged in several international research efforts on the social determinants of health.  He served as President of the British Medical Association (BMA) in 2010-2011, President of the World Medical Association (2015-2016), and is President of the British Lung Foundation.  He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians.  He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for six years and in 2000 he was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen, for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities. 

Dr Chaand Nagpaul has for over three decades worked as a GP partner in his group practice in Stanmore, North London, and which serves a large multi-ethnic community.

He has also dedicated his professional life representing and supporting doctors. He is past chair of the BMA GPs committee and was the first black and minority ethnic chair of the BMA Council from 2017 to 2022.  As BMA chair, he represented doctors working in all settings and disciplines across the UK, and he also led the medical profession through the challenges of the Covid pandemic both in dialogue with government and in the media.

He has long advocated for racial equality in medicine and led the BMA’s seminal project on Racism in Medicine in 2022. He is chair of the BMA Forum for Racial and Ethnic Equality.

He is a Trustee of the charity Doctors in Distress, which aims to protect and promote the mental health of all healthcare professionals and to prevent self-harm and suicide.

He has been awarded the CBE for services to primary care, a Fellowship of the Royal College of General Practitioners and an Honorary Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health. He is listed in the Health Service Journal’s top 50 most influential ethnic minority leaders in the NHS.

Dr David R. Williams is the Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health and Chair, Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His prior faculty appointments were at Yale University and the University of Michigan. He holds an MPH from Loma Linda University and a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan. 

The author of more than 500 scientific papers, his research has enhanced our understanding of the ways in which race, socioeconomic status, stress, racism, health behaviour and religious involvement can affect physical and mental health. The Everyday Discrimination Scale that he developed is the most widely used measure of discrimination in health studies.  

He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2001, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. He has received Distinguished Contribution Awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Psychological Association and the New York Academy of Medicine. He was ranked as the Most Cited Black Scholar in the Social Sciences in 2008. In 2014, Thomson Reuters ranked him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.  

He has played a visible, national leadership role in raising awareness levels of inequities in health and interventions to address them. He has served on multiple national advisory committees (including 10 Committees for the National Academy of Sciences), as the staff director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America and as a key scientific advisor to the award-winning PBS film series, Unnatural Causes: Is inequality Making Us Sick? His research has been featured in the national print and television media and in his TED Talk. 

Charles Kwaku-Odoi DL is Chief Executive of the Caribbean & African Health Network (CAHN), a leading national Black health organisation at the forefront of reducing health inequalities and wider disparities. He is a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Greater Manchester, an honorary member of the esteemed Faculty of Public Health (FPH), and the honorary Ecumenical Canon at Manchester Cathedral.

He holds Board roles including at Manchester Foundation Trust, Council of Governors, and the Government Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), Ethnicity Subgroup. In 2022 and 2023, Charles was named in the Health Service Journal’s 50 most influential Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people in health in the UK.

Charles is an advocate for equity and fairness across a range of important health and well-being issues for people of the Caribbean and African Diaspora. He is involved in work that influences research, policy, and practice at regional and national levels.

His special interest includes civic and democratic participation, blood & organ donation, HIV, domestic violence, modern slavery and hate crime.

Dr. Varadarajan Kalidasan is an experienced paediatric surgeon who trained in India, Australia and Ireland before becoming a consultant at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital in 1997.

He has been on the RHO Stakeholder Engagement Advisory Group since its inception.  He has held various NHS roles such as Co-Director of the Surrey and Sussex Comprehensive Clinical Research Network (CLRN) and Director of Medical Education in his Trust in Brighton.

Currently, he is a Governor at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust and also a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Sussex Cricket.  He is a member of the International Affairs Committee of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons and an Honorary Education Tutor at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.  He gave up clinical commitments in 2022.