Strategy and Policy Development

The team provides a central support to the PCT by facilitating the development of strategy and policy to improve health and reduce health inequalities. This involves working with other agencies to maximise the health impact of their strategies. It also has a role to develop the public health capacity of the PCT and wider health community.

The team supports public health policy and skills development through the provision of research and evaluation evidence, data analysis and a public health library and administrative support to the Department.

For more about Health and Social Care Research in Bolton, click here visit the website of the Bolton Research Forum"

The team comprises:

Deborah Harkins – Public Health Specialist (Team Lead)

Deborah’s role is to facilitate the development of public policy and strategy to improve health and reduce health inequalities. This includes the development of NHS strategy as well as multi-agency and healthy public policy.
Deborah leads the health element of Bolton’s Local Area Agreement and works very closely with Bolton Council to oversee its implementation; she is also responsible for monitoring the implementation of Bolton Community Strategy’s health targets. She is PCT lead for Health Inequalities and co-ordinates the implementation of Bolton’s Health Inequalities Strategy working with a range of partner agencies, and leads Bolton’s Health Equity Audit Programme, which identifies specific inequities in health, and sets clear targets for their reduction.
Deborah is PCT lead for local NHS Corporate Social Responsibility and Neighbourhood Renewal, and provides public health input into the development of Practice-based Commissioning and a number of specific service reviews.
Deborah also has responsibility for the leadership of East Bolton Regeneration Health Topic and Great Lever Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder Health and Well-Being Group. These initiatives involve the identification of local health needs and the development, implementation and monitoring of initiatives to improve the health of the local population and therefore contribute to neighbourhood renewal in East Bolton and Great Lever.

Brenda Griffiths - Senior Public Health Practitioner

Brenda’s role is mainly centred within West Bolton. Brenda facilitates a community development approach to improve health and reduce health inequality on the Johnson Fold estate and in areas of Horwich. She acts as a coordinating link between health visiting and public health and is undertaking NHS sponsored research around the role of health visitors in reducing health inequality. Brenda is also involved in developing borough wide policies around childhood nutrition and obesity, the uptake of folic acid supplementation in women of childbearing age, the opportunistic case-finding of iron deficiency anaemia and the development of the health visiting service in Bolton. She is a member of the Greater Manchester Health Inequalities Steering Group and the Heart Research UK Lifestyle Grants Review Panel.

Lesley Hardman - Library Manager

Lesley has responsibility for the management and development of the PCT Library.
Within her wider public health role, Lesley represents the PCT on a number of initiatives. These include working alongside Environmental Services on Food Safety Week, Health & Care Together Advisory group, Department of Health - Health Promotion Reference Group. She is also involved with the Regional Network of Resource & Information Officers and the Library and Information Health network Northwest (LIHNN).

Lesley is working in partnership with the Royal Bolton Hospital Head Librarian to facilitate service developments for an integrated health library service across the borough of Bolton.

Roger Harrison – Research Scientist in Public Health

Roger works with the Public Health Department and across the PCT to identify, support and implement a research agenda to our work. With the support of a research officer in public health, the public health team are establishing a credible evidence-based approach to their work, based on the public health evidence cycle of “ask the right question”, “collect appropriate information/data”, “understand, appraise and synthesize the evidence” and finally “apply the findings appropriately to local policy”. Roger provides support to the PCT to develop a strategic research & development agenda for the organisation. His personal vision is for a research strategy that operates across Bolton, rather than one focusing on a particular area of care, illness, or organisation. Health & social care issues do not remain in the confines of an organisation, so nor should a research agenda. To support this, with the help of local research pioneers, Roger established the Bolton Research Forum in Health & Social Care (http://boltonresearchforum.org.uk), providing a local network for research interest & activity in health and social care across Bolton.
Roger’s own research interests include the application of randomised controlled trials to evaluate public health and lifestyle interventions, public health-related systematic reviews, developing and evaluating the effectiveness of lay health workers, population approaches to health decision making and methods to measure diet quality for public health. Following his PhD, he has developed expertise in the role of omega3 for heart-health, with the Wigan & Bolton Dietary Intervention Study for Atrial Fibrillation the first to question the potential role of omega3 fish oils for cardiac arrhythmias.

Roger has a position at University of Manchester as a Senior Research Fellow in the Division of Epidemiology and Health Sciences and is module leader for ‘evidence for population health’ on the web-based Masters in Public Health. He has an honorary Senior Research Fellowship in the School of Nutrition Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Leeds and a track record of presentations with publications in the mainstream academic press.

David Holt – Public Health Intelligence Specialist

David manages and promotes a range of intelligence services for the PCT and its partners to inform strategy development, priority setting and decision-making. This includes leading the development of the public health information and intelligence function so as to ensure that it meets changing strategic and organisational needs. The role includes the provision of specialist advice and guidance on public health intelligence as well as the presentation and interpretation of health related information. David supports a wide spectrum of public health work including health needs assessment, health equity audit, health impact assessment and identifying patterns of health service utilisation.
David also manages and the PCT geographical information system (GIS) and promotes the use of GIS analysis in strategic and service planning.

Julie Holt - Food Strategy Co-ordinator and Public Health Obesity Reduction Lead

Julie is leading on the development of a childhood obesity surveillance system to be implemented in primary schools in Bolton. She is also co-ordinating the development of care pathways for the assessment, treatment and management of overweight and obesity in children and adults, based on evidence based practice and knowledge of the local population’s needs.
She provides specialist advice on public health food and nutrition issues to the PCT and its partners and supports health eating projects. Julie also contributes to the development of public health capacity through organisation and delivering training for the PCT.

Leesa Kahraman - Health Project Development Worker

Leesa’s role involves leading the development, implementation and evaluation of new area based and borough wide health initiatives such as Social Prescribing, Welfare Rights Advice in Primary Care Settings, Affordable Warmth Referral Scheme, with the aim of reducing inequalities and improving the health and well-being of the people in Bolton. She actively seeks funding and works closely with charitable and voluntary agencies to secure funding for projects that reduce inequalities and have a positive impact on health. She continues to support projects within East Bolton Regeneration and looks for opportunities to engage communities.
Leesa is also involved with initiatives addressing health targets within the Local Public Service Agreements around Coronary Heart Disease and Benefit Take-up.
Leesa is a member of Bolton’s multi-agency Affordable Warmth Steering Group contributing to the development of Bolton’s Affordable Warmth Strategy.

Shahan Lais – Health Development Officer

Shahan’s role primarily is to support local healthcare services, and ensure that they work differently to better community needs in Great Lever. Shahan is a point of contact for Great Lever Neighbourhood Management, and Bolton PCT to enable sharing of information and knowledge, promoting cross-organisational working to provide more holistic services addressing local health needs. Shahan also works in partnership with local workers, groups and agencies to develop community based health projects within Great Lever to implement the health elements of the Great Lever Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder delivery plan. Key themes of Shahan’s work is to develop:
• A community- based health programme to raise awareness of diabetes and coronary heart disease including self care, prevention, risk factors and symptoms and support available from local health services.
• Develop, implement monitor and mange a Social Prescribing Project in Great Lever.
• Increase local peoples skills & capacity to improve their own health through the delivery of community development approaches in Great Lever
• Develop a Great Lever Neighbourhood Management healthy workplace initiative
• Implement, monitor & evaluate a programme of health projects, including: alcohol & drugs misuse awareness; healthy eating; mental health & well-being promotion; sexual health
• Deliver a programme of health activities as part of Hayward School Extended Campus initiative, and to act as a link between the school & local health services
• Current health work includes; Over 50s Health & Social Group, Women’s Exercise Group, & establishing a Stop Smoking Service in Great Lever. Working with young people to raise awareness of healthy lifestyles.
Shahan has worked in Public Health for several years in a diverse range of settings such as Burnley and East Manchester and also as a Health researcher in New York for Amnesty International.
Shahan says “I enjoy working with the community as I am dealing with real lives and real issues. Health does matter and is important; it’s about opportunities, about having a choice, in our own and family’s health. We can work together to make health improvements in Great Lever.”

Phil Ramsell

Phil has recently taken on the role of Chair of the Staff Union Committee. This role takes up all his time working for Bolton PCT. The joint Management and Trade Union Agenda is considerable particularly with Agenda for Change.

Although this is not mainstream Public Health work, Phil would argue that in defending and improving the working lives of staff, the trade unions can have a positive impact on the underlying determinants of ill health and hence lead to improved staff morale and better services for patients.

Colin Thompson - Public Health Specialist Trainee

Colin is currently in his second year of training to become a public health specialist and is currently studying for the Faculty of Public Health Part A exam. Colin is currently involved in developing an alcohol strategy with a range of partners.

Shan Wilkinson – Public Health Research Officer

Shân's role underpins the work of the public health department, supporting the development of an evidence-informed approach to local decision-making and policy development. This involves helping colleagues ensure they make best use of existing research and evaluation in their areas, and using robust methods to evaluate projects involving members of the department. She is also responsible for developing a strategic approach to R&D within the public health department. Her research interests include the application of health psychology to public health.

The Public Health Department’s Administrative team

Yvonne Cunningham & Brenda Hill – Administrative Co-ordinators

Yvonne and Brenda supervise the Public Health secretarial team and maintain the office systems. They provide secretarial and administrative support to the Clinical Quality and Development team as well as organising the Bolton Public Health out of hours on-call rota.

Margaret Heyes - Secretary

Margaret provides secretarial and administrative support to the Settings Development team.