A very special live recorded episode of the podcast at the 2025 UKHSA Conference, live and in partnership with the UK Faculty of Public Health.
We were joined by Professor Kevin Fenton, Professor Yvonne Doyle and Dr. Meera Chand to discuss the evolving landscape of public health leadership and the skills required for the challenges ahead. We delved into the challenges systems leaders face, their reflections on how to navigate chaotic environments and the practical advice for current and future leaders.
BIOS:
Dr. Meera Chand leads UKHSA's national specialist clinical and public health functions for emerging, respiratory and high threat infections. She has over two decades of experience in incident response and has been the incident lead for a range of high threat outbreaks including mpox, COVID-19, lassa fever and H5N1. Meera is also the clinical lead for the UKHSA-wide pathogen genomics programme.
Professor Yvonne Doyle brings over 40 years’ experience as a public health doctor who has worked in several senior roles including as the first Medical Director for Public Health at NHS England and had a leadership role in England for health protection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yvonne is currently a senior adviser to the WHO-Europe on ageing in good health and has a number of non-executive roles and chairs the Health Services Committee at the UK Faculty of Public Health.Professor Kevin Fenton is the President of the Faculty of Public Health and the Regional Director for London in the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) within DHSC. As regional director, Kevin is the statutory public health advisor to the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority. And as President of the Faculty, Kevin works closely with a wide range of partners who have interests in Public Health.
CHAPTERS
(00:00) Introduction and setting the scene
(03:06) Panellist introductions
(05:55) Systems leadership and influencing change
(08:43) Delivering results in public health - long term vs. shortterm
(10:40) Systems leadership skills during acute response
(13:29) Leadership during chaos and uncertainty
(18:03) Preparing for chaos
(19:00) Knowing yourself and burnout
(21:29) Motivating staff
(25:08) Saying thank you
(29:19) Loyalty
(32:04) Leadership across borders
(35:22) Traits of incident response leaders
(37:50) Authenticity in leadership
(41:38) Healthy ageing
(43:24) Supporting leadership transitions
(45:38) Leadership development
(47:36) Q&A
(52:09) One career tip
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