Our team – UK Health Alliance on Climate Change

Ambassadors

Professor Dame Parveen Kumar

Parveen is an ambassador to the UKHACC and an Emerita Professor of Medicine and education at Barts and the London School of Medicine Queen Mary University of London. She has a long-standing interest in Global health and its education in medical schools. She helped set up the Global Health programme at the Royal Society of Medicine with B Sethia, when she was president there. She edited a book written by 127 medical students from around the world on the Essentials of Global Health and writes the chapter on Planetary health in Kumar and Clark’s Clinical medicine which she started. She has held many other national roles.

Fiona Godlee

Fiona is an ambassador to the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, Trustee to The Eden Project and the former Editor in chief of the British Medical Journal. She has written and lectured on a broad range of issues, including health and the environment, the ethics of academic publishing, evidence based medicine, access to clinical trial data, research integrity, open access publishing, patient partnership, conflict of interest, and overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

Robin Stott

Robin is a founder member and now ambassador of the UK health alliance on climate change. Robin is a retired consultant physician, site dean and medical director of Lewisham university hospital. He has a lifetime interest in developing more socially and economically equal societies, which when co-created by people and legislators, and developed within environmental limits, are optimal precursors for good health. In this context he has been chair of MEDACT, chair of the international committee of physicians for prevention on nuclear war, chair of Greenwich CND, active in movements to liberate the erstwhile colonies, and an enthusiastic supporter of XR. In addition to enjoying his roles as husband of 53 years, father of two and grandfather of 5, Robin relishes exercise, which he sees as a magic bullet in the prevention of non communicable disease. He runs, plays the clarinet so badly that it frightens the cat, sings in a local choir, cycles, practises tai chi regularly, and is a keen amateur astronomer.

Trustees

Richard Smith

Richard is chair of the Point of Care Foundation, which promotes
compassionate, dignified care, and Patients Know Best (a company that
brings all medical and social care records together in one place under the
control of patients), and a cochair of the Lancet Commission on the Value of
Death.
From 1979 to 2004 he worked at the BMJ and was the editor of the journal
and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group from 1991 until he left.
From 2012 to 2018 he was the chair of icddr,b, which was formerly known
as the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.

Juliet Dobson

Juliet is the managing editor of the BMJ Family. She runs the technical editing and publishing services team, as well as managing the opinion section and bmj.com. She co-leads The BMJ’s campaign on the climate emergency. She started at the BMJ as an editorial intern before working on the bmj.com web team. She completed an MA in publishing at University College London. She has an undergraduate degree in History and French at University College London, and she spent a year studying history at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

Rose Gallagher MBE

Rose is the nursing sustainability lead at the Royal College of Nursing. She provides strategic leadership and specialist professional advice to the Royal College, its members and key stakeholders across the UK on sustainability in addition to Infection Prevention and Control and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Rose successfully led the RCN ‘Small changes Big Differences’ campaign focusing on the role and influence of nurses in procurement and the RCN ‘Glove Awareness’ campaign. Rose brings a nursing focus to the work of the UK Health Alliance and uses her broad networks and influence to motivate and engage nursing professionals on this most important issue.

Terry Kemple

Terry is a retired GP in Bristol, England. He has had roles in teaching, training, quality improvement, management and research. He is a member of the WONCA Working Party on the Environment, has been the lead for the RCGP’s Green Impact for Health Toolkit since 2014, and an executive member of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change since 2017. He was the RCGP national representative for Sustainability, Climate Change and Green Issues until 2023, and is a Past President of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Jacob Kranowski

Jacob is a consultant addiction psychiatrist working in the National Health Service and an Associate Registrar for Sustainability at the Royal College of Psychiatry. Through the RCPsych he works to support the transition of mental health services to embody values of sustainability. He has a specific interest in developing a wider appreciation for the interface between mental health and nature. As an Associate at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, Jacob helped to develop the Green Walking Initiative a project which seeks to integrate experiences of nature into inpatient psychiatric care.

Liz Marder

Liz is Consultant Paediatrician (Community Child Health/ Neurodisability) at
Nottingham Children’s Hospital, working within inner city Nottingham for the past 30
Years. She has held varied roles in her Trust. Within the Nottinghamshire health community she was Children’s lead for the Darzi review and set up the Children’s Health Network. She sits on the Greener ICS Advisory Group and on the East Midlands Clinical Senate Council. In 2019 Liz was appointed Treasurer of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). She has chaired the RCPCH Climate Change Working group since its inception in 2021 and co-leads the college Achieving Net Zero project.

Rhiannon Osborne

Rhiannon (she/her) is a final year medical student, researcher and organiser working on extractivism, health inequalities and access to medicines. She organises with the People’s Health Movement, Stop Cambo and Health for a Green New Deal.

Dan Sumners

Dan is the deputy director for communications, policy and research at the Royal College of Physicians, which he joined in 2017. He has worked across policy, communications, strategy and governance in his 19 year career. His roles have been in various sectors, including volunteering development, deafness and hearing loss, and higher education. The skills of analysis, critical thinking and clear writing he developed during a degree in philosophy have served him well as a policy and communications professional.

Staff

Dr Elaine Mulcahy, Director

Elaine has a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Strathclyde and completed post-doctoral research in neurophysiology at the University of Sydney and Australian National University. She has extensive experience working in health and science communications and strategic leadership roles including editor of the nanotechnology magazine NANO and communications roles at University of Melbourne, University of Dundee and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

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Dr Anandita Pattnaik, Policy Officer

Anandita is a medical doctor with an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Prior to moving to the UK, she worked with Médecins Sans Frontières in a mobile primary health care project in a tribal region in central India. She is also the Planetary Health Report Card regional lead for India and is working towards creating awareness and advocating for climate change & health education for healthcare professionals in India and other low & middle-income countries.

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Melissa Pegg, Fellow in Sustainable Surgery

Melissa is a Practitioner with the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA). She has an MSc in Sustainability and Environmental management and received the Directors Award for her publication into operating room waste management. Melissa is currently completing an MSc in Health Technology Assessment and has extensive experience working in industry with medical technologies. Melissa was awarded the Fellowship in Sustainable Surgery to deliver the Green Surgery Project.

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