Advisors

CHGN is accountable and reports to a sub-committee of the Board of InterHealth Worldwide.  CHGN has 6 UK based Advisors, who meet with the core CHGN Team on a quarterly basis.

Advisory Committee:

Kevin Belcher, Chief Executive of InterHealth Worldwide
Kevin has been CEO of InterHealth since May 2008. Prior to this he was CEO at Pecan, a Christian charity in South East London working with ex-offenders, refugees and the long term employed helping them find meaningful employment. Kevin is on the Board of Redcliffe College, Hackney Quest, Oasis Community Health and chair of a new Church Plant called Life Community Ministries in East London. Kevin is also committed to his church in Hackney where he lives with his wife (a local GP) and his 7 children. To keep himself sane he plays squash on a regular basis.

Kevin is very pleased to be involved with CHGN and looks forward to working with the team supporting the network of committed people empowering others to make a difference around the world.

Dr Nick Henwood, Co-Founder of CHGN
General Practitioner and specialist in Public Health for developing countries. Nick worked in Nepal for 9 years with the United Mission to Nepal and Medécins du Monde, for whom he launched and led a Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS programme. Nick presently works part time as a GP in Leicester, UK, as well as volunteering for CHGN and at his local Anglican church. He is married with two daughters.

Professor Andrew Tomkins
Andrew qualified in Medicine at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. After  postgraduate training in London he worked in Zaria, Nigeria, initially as a clinician and,  after training in nutrition at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he  worked again in Nigeria, this time in research at the MRC group in Malumfashi, on different community based programmes of child health and nutrition with a particular focus on Infection and Nutrition. He moved to the MRC unit in Fajara in the Gambia to develop this research. After returning to the UK set up a number of collaborative research and training links in Asia and Africa and expanded these when he moved to the Institute of Child Health in London to set up the Centre for International Child Health (now the Centre for International health). His main research now is on the interaction between HIV and nutrition and evaluation of different nutrition interventions, mostly in Zambia. He is currently working on the evaluation of faith based community care of HIV in a number of African countries. He is or has been a Board member of Tearfund, CMF and UNICEF UK and is advisor to WHO, DFID, UNICEF and the World Bank. In his own words, "I am delighted to be associated with CHGN because of its great commitment to community action, particularly by faith groups."

Dr Marko Kerac
Expertise: Management of acute malnutrition, nutrition and HIV, use of Geographic Information Systems in health research
Biography: Marko qualified from UCL Medical School in 1998, and worked on various short international health projects in Guyana, Serbia, and India. Upon completion of basic specialist training in paediatrics he worked in Malawi at the College of Medicine, Blantyre as an honourary lecturer and registrar in the Department of Paediatrics 2003-2004. It was there - on "MOYO" ward -Malawi's biggest and busiest Nutritional Rehabilitation Unit (1600+ admissions per year), that he developed his current interest in child malnutrition. Following a year back in the UK studying for the Public Health for Developing Countries MSc at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he returned to Malawi in late 2005 where he combined clinical and teaching duties with a part-time PhD, supported by Valid International, UK. The main trial was a large RCT looking at new Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods(RUTF) and probiotic-enhanced RUTF in improving the management of acute child malnutrition. Marko is now working on a project looking at the Management of Acute Malnutrition in Infants (MAMI).


Veronica Moss
Veronica qualified in medicine in 1970. In 1975 she set up a Community Health and Development Programme in central India. On return to the UK two years later, she went into General Practice, and was Medical Adviser to the Church Missionary Society. She met the Phychiatrist, Dr. Marjory Foyle, and found they both had a concern for the health and well-being of missionaries and volunteers. Together they set up the Missionaries and Volunteers Health Service in 1986 at the Mildmay Mission Hospital in East London; this became a separate registered charity called InterHealth in 1989, under the leadership of Dr. Ted Lankester. Veronica went on to focus upon developing Europe’s first AIDS Hospice Programme at Mildmay, together with colleague Ruth Sims, CBE. In the early 1990’s, Mildmay won a contract with the British Council to teach about HIV and AIDS in East Africa, and was invited to set up a specialist treatment and care centre in Uganda. Veronica lived in Uganda from 1998-2002, developing the work as the Medical Director of the Mildmay Centre. Ruth Sims also set up a sister project, The Mildmay Paediatric Care Centre, to which Veronica was Medical Adviser. The centre had extensive outreach programmes for HIV infected and affected children in communities all over Uganda. Later, Veronica led the development of a Paediatric AIDS Clinic in Harare, Zimbabwe, which also had a community outreach programme. She retired from Mildmay in 2008, but has been involved in a project to improve the government care of children with severe malnutrition in Uganda. In her words, “I am very happy to be involved with CHGN, and am particularly interested in the support programme leaders can give to each other through sharing experiences”.


Sarah Davidson       
Dr Sarah Davidson is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the NHS and Psychosocial Advisor to the British Red Cross.  She is also the Programme Leader for the MSc in International Humanitarian Psychosocial Consultation by distance learning at the University of East London.  The MSc collaborates with specialists from around the world to deliver a unique curriculum focussing on psychosocial aspects and consultation across a range of different global contexts.  These roles and this collaborative approach fit well with the Community Health Global Network, which builds on people’s experiences and resilience, promoting good practice and effective partnerships. In Sarah's words, "It is both stimulating and exciting to be on the CHGN Advisory Committee, and to see and hear about the different ways people can make a difference to their and one another’s health and wellbeing".


Jonathan Hett
Jonathan Hett has been involved with international relief and development organisations throughout his working life.  This has either been as a UK-based member of staff for various NGOs, or working for them on the field particularly in East Africa, where he spent five years at different times in Kenya and Uganda.  Jonathan is deeply committed to small-scale organisations, particularly those taking a community based approach to the development challenges that frequently face rural communities in African countries.  He believes passionately that the answers to such challenges lie within those communities and that the network represented by CHGN provides a wonderful opportunity to develop strong and supportive links, where programme leaders and staff working in the health sector, may be encouraged and envisioned through connecting with each other, wherever they may be in the world.


David Evans - Health Manager of USPG


Alison Campbell - AFFIRM Faciliation Associates



International Advisors:

We are in the process of drawing together some International Advisors who have particular expertise in Community Health.  We will post the bios of our International Advisors in due course.