Stephen Powis is the National Medical Director of NHS England and Professor of Renal Medicine at University College London.

Previously he was Medical Director (and latterly Group Chief Medical Officer) of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust from 2006 to 2018. Professor Powis was also a member of the governing body of Merton Clinical Commissioning Group for five years and a Director of Healthcare Services Laboratories LLP.

He is a past Chairman of the Association of UK Universities (AUKUH) Medical Directors Group and has been a member of numerous national committees and working groups, including the Department of Health Strategic Education Funding Expert Group. He is a past non-executive director of the North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust, including a period of eight months as acting chairman.

He is a past chairman of the Joint Royal Colleges of Physicians Training Board (JRCPTB) Specialty Advisory Committee (SAC) for Renal Medicine and a former board member of Medical Education England. He was Director of Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education for UCLPartners from 2010-13. He is a past treasurer and trustee of the British Transplantation Society and a former member of the UK Transplant Kidney Pancreas Advisory Group.

He has also served as a member of the Renal Association Executive Committee. He was Editor of the journal Nephron Clinical Practice from 2003 to 2008. In 2017 he became the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the journal BMJ Leader. He has been a trustee of several charities, including the Royal Free Charity and the Healthcare Management Trust.

Caroline is Age UK's Charity Director and oversees all the charity's influencing and marketing.

She is a member of the NHS Assembly and was formerly a SRO for the Ageing Well strand of the NHS Long Term Plan. She is also co-chair of the Care and Support Alliance (70+ charities campaigning for decent social care for all who need it).

She has been at Age UK for a decade after other roles in the voluntary sector, the LGA, and as a civil servant and adviser in Government and Opposition.

Sean Duggan has been Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network since 2016. Sean is dedicated to raising standards of care and treatment of mental health services and improving lives of those who use services and their carers. His focus is on influencing politicians, policy makers and heads of public sector organisations and other key stakeholders to deliver evidence-based intervention with a sound economic basis.

Sean is a passionate supporter of multi-sector service delivery within mental health and has ensured this is reflected in the membership of the network, which has grown to include independent and third sector organisations, including digital providers and housing associations, under his leadership. Sean has championed partnership working within these specialist areas, leading to the establishment of the MHN's Digital Mental Health and Mental Health and Housing forums.

With a background as a registered mental health nurse, Sean has influenced health policy on a national level; through his membership of the NHS Long-Term Plan steering group and chairing of the Mental Health Act Review’s 'Addressing Rising Detention Rates' Topic Group. 

Criminal justice and prison mental health have been priorities for Sean over the past 30 years; in 2006 he joined the Sainsbury’s Centre for Mental Health as director of Criminal Justice Programme, before becoming Chief Executive. Immediately before this, Sean was Director of Health and Social Care for Criminal Justice at the London Development Centre and offender health consultant for the Department of Health. Sean is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Mental Health and in 2013 was awarded the President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Having first trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, Dr Clare Gerada followed her father’s footsteps and became a general practitioner, working in her practice in South London for more than thirty years.

Over this time, alongside her clinical practice, she has held several national leadership positions including in 2010, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, only the second women in its 55-year history to hold this position.  She has led the way in reforming how drug users are managed in general practice and was awarded an MBE for his services to medicine and substance misuse in the 2000 Birthday honours.

Since she has also led the development of a service for doctors and dentists with mental health problems, establishing and leading NHS Practitioner Health since 2008. This has been, not only a world first, but massively impactful, particularly on young doctors and consequently on the patients they look after and the teams in which they work.  The service was awarded Outstanding by CQC rating in March 2019. Currently Clare not only still leads NHS Practitioner Health but has, in 2020 established a service for problem gamblers, the Primary Care Gambling Serivce; Chairs the newly formed registered charity, Doctors in Distress, is co-chair of the NHS Assembly. 

In 2020 she was made a Dame in the Queen’s birthday honours, making her, we believe, the first Maltese woman to receive this honour.  In November 2021 she became the President of the RCGP (only the second women to hold both Chair and President of the College in its 70 year history).  She is a highly respected NHS professional, whose views are listened to by NHS professionals and patients alike. 

NHS England has a Youth Forum, made up of 25 young people from all over the country, who have a passion for improving health services for young people.

The Youth Forum gives a voice to young people to express their thoughts on the health issues that matter most to them. It works directly with NHS England, Public Health England and the Department of Health enabling the Forum to have a real impact on the health services that young people use.You can find the peer-reviewed study paper on the NHS Youth Forum which was carried out by the University of Hertfordshire.  It is free to access.

The current issues the Youth Forum is working to tackle include:

• Make sure young people understand their healthcare rights.
• #yourhealthinyourhands – working to give young people control to prevent illness and stay well.
• Improving opportunities for young people to get involved in primary care, for example in their GP or dental practice.
• Developing ‘golden rules’ for good care, highlighting what young people need from their care pathway.

James Lyons is director of communications for NHS England and NHS Improvement.

James joined NHS England as head of media and public affairs in 2017 after a career in journalism. He was deputy political editor of The Sunday Times, having previously held the same position at the Daily Mirror.

Christina McAnea took up her post on 22 January 2021 after her time as one of UNISON’s five assistant general secretaries, Christina has worked at UNISON since its formation in 1993, having previously joined local government union NALGO as women’s officer in the late 1980s after spending time working in the civil service and the NHS.

In her time at UNISON, Christina became the union’s most senior negotiator, with a wide-ranging public services brief covering health, education, social care, local government and equalities. She has held senior positions across the union, negotiating on behalf of members working in police forces, schools, universities and colleges, and the NHS.

While head of health at the union, Christina played a key negotiating role in the national dispute over pensions, when up to two million public sector workers took part in a day of action in late 2011. Three years later, she was the lead negotiator in the first national health strike in England in 25 years.

Christina is a member of the ACAS Council, sits on the government’s Covid-19 social care stakeholder group and was the driving force behind the creation last year of the future social care coalition, a cross-party alliance of more than 80 organisations and individuals.

Rachel joined the Patients Association as Chief Executive in June 2017, bringing with her over 20 years’ experience of health and social care in the not-for-profit sector.  

Since joining, Rachel has overseen a significant period of change, which has included a significantly increased and engaged membership. Rachel was appointed to the NHS Assembly in 2019 and is also a member of the NHS Elective Recovery Taskforce, National Outpatient Transformation Programme Patient and Voluntary Sector Advisory Group, and the National Patient Safety Response Advisory Panel. Rachel also chairs the Patient Coalition for AI, Data and Digital Tech in Health, which brings together a diverse group of patient groups, charities, Royal Colleges and industry.     

Rachel’s focus is on building true partnerships with patients throughout health and care services, part of the Patients Association’s five-year true patient partnership strategy.  The strategy answers the challenge of rebuilding health and care following the pandemic and overcoming many long-running problems for patients about not being listened to and services that meet their needs.

Rajiv is a practising medical doctor passionate about collaboration, innovation and digital transformation to improve health outcomes.

While a medical student at King's College London, training at Guy's, King's College and St. Thomas' Hospitals, he worked to redesign the new medical curriculum 2020 through digital collaboration. 

In 2016, Rajiv joined the founding faculty of the World's first Digital Health and Innovation module of its kind at Queen Mary University of London and in 2017, he was appointed the youngest Global Fellow at Health Education England and a Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow at NHS England.

To improve the quality and accessibility of health education as well as globalise #openaccess learning in health he co-founded multiple initiatives including @ICGRx (the World's first Global Grand Round).  

Rajiv is the recipient of the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) New Leaders Award and the Greater Manchester Health & Care Award for his role in establishing the national widening participation initiative 'Becoming a Doctor' (@BecomingaDr) and the National Health Careers Conference.

The conference has evolved with the development of the 'Virtual Health Careers Conference' and the Health Careers Live platform addressing regional, national and global health workforce challenges. The team were recognised with the NHS Parliamentary Award for improving Health Inequalities and now support a global community of current and future health workers from 151 countries. In 2021, Members of Parliament and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care honoured Rajiv with the NHS Parliamentary Award for his significant contribution to the NHS.

Professor Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard is Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (2020-2023). She is the immediate past Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (2016-2019) and a GP Principal in a dynamic large inclusive practice in Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Helen has a Chair in General Practice Education at the Medical School in the University of Birmingham where she has been an Academic GP for two decades. Her academic portfolio has included a wide range of research methods, running a clinical trials unit, running the academic department of Primary Care, running a MSc programme, mentoring Drs in difficulty and leading the Community Based Medicine programme.

Helen is the foundation Chair of Trustees of the National Academy for Social Prescribing, a charity dedicated to advancing the cause and improving the evidence base around social prescribing. She is a trustee of MacMillan, the cancer charity, she provides advice to government, arms-length bodies and academic bodies and sits on many national boards and committees.

Helen is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and has been awarded Honorary Fellowship from the Faculty of Public Health Medicine, The Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, The Royal Colleges of Anaesthetists and honorary doctorates from St Georges University of London and University of Buckinghamshire. She has had a high media profile with over 25,000 mentions in printed media and completed over 350 broadcast media interviews.

Helen joined Carers UK in December 2018, from the national volunteering charity TimeBank where she was Chief Executive for ten years. Since joining Carers UK she has focussed on ensuring the financial stability and growth of the charity in order to launch our ambitious new strategy, Vision 2025. Helen has been appointed to represent carers on the NHS Assembly, the body brought together to advise NHS England and NHS Improvement on the delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan, as well as the National Institute for Health Research, School for Social Care Research Advisory Board at the LSE.

Her extensive leadership experience and sector knowledge saw her create a well-respected and successful brand at TimeBank. Previously, Helen was Director of Fundraising at the military charity SSAFA and has worked in the voluntary sector for over 25 years. Brought up on the Isle of Man, she studied for a degree and M.Phil at the London School of Economics.