PCN Live 2023 Programme

Helen has special interest and expertise in vaccination and immunisation and public health nursing. She has had a varied career across general nursing, midwifery, practice nursing, health visiting and specialist health protection including working for Local Authority teams, and at the Royal College of Nursing as the Professional Lead for public health nursing. She currently works independently, as a nurse consultant and trainer in immunisation and at the University of Hertfordshire as senior lecturer. Helen is also the Chair of the Self-Care forum a national charity working across health and wider organisations to further the reach of self-care.

Dr Catherine Heffernan is currently SWL Public Health Consultant at the Southwest London Integrated Care System and Director of Health Improvement at SWL ICB.  She’s also a visiting senior lecturer at King’s College London.  She has over 15 years’ experience working on immunisations, including 9 years as Principal Public Health Advisor for Early Years, Immunisations and Vaccination Services at Public Health England and NHS England (London Region).   She has also published widely on improving vaccine uptake and coverage.

Ren Lawlor is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner and Independent Prescriber in London and the south east. She currently works as the academic tutor and advanced practice lead for the South East London Training Hub and is a visiting lecturer for various universities including the University of Greenwich. Ren has a special interest in respiratory disease in primary care and is the vice chair for executive committee, and the chair for the education committee for the Primary Care Respiratory Society (PCRS-UK). Ren is the founder and director of The Good Practitioner - Education and Training.

Jacqui has specialised in respiratory medicine since 1989, having worked as a specialist nurse in both primary and secondary care. She has developed many respiratory training packages for healthcare professionals leading to a higher diploma award accredited by Liverpool University.

Jacqui has not only worked for the NHS experience but has also worked for a short period in medical marketing for MSD as she wanted to appreciate how clinical research studies were conceived. She supported the launch of Montelukast working with healthcare professionals across Europe.

In 1992 she was awarded a Medical Community Award by the Association of British Insurers for her work in respiratory care within the local communities. Jacqui worked for nearly five years across six countries in the Middle East supporting doctors and nurses with the Asthma Diploma programme from Edge Hill University.

Jacqui continued her interest in research on returning to the UK by working on the Salford Lung Study – the world’s first ‘real-world effectiveness study’. Now working as a Respiratory Nurse Consultant for Healthier South Wirral. Here she leads and supports nurses across six GP practices in all aspects of respiratory care. Respiratory care has been Jacqui’s passion and love for over 33 years. However, she appreciates most Healthcare Professionals are not as lucky as her at being able to focus on one area of patient only, therefore she strides to support them as much as possible and work in partnership with them.

Anne Phillips is a Queens Nurse and a National Teaching Fellow with the Higher Education Academy. After a career in specialist and community diabetes nursing in London and Yorkshire, Anne works with colleagues at Birmingham City University and has established a countrywide and international collaborative curriculum for Health Professionals in Diabetes Care. Anne’s doctorate studies concerned invigorating diabetes health professional education to meet service and client centred needs. Anne has published 102 peer reviewed articles and edited ‘Principles of Diabetes Care" which was published in 2017 in its 2nd edition. She has just edited ‘Diabetes: At a Glance’ to encourage student nurses to enter the specialism of working alongside people with diabetes. She has been an editorial member for the European Medical Journal Diabetes Series and UK

Niraj is currently the lead clinical pharmacist for the largest primary care provider in Leicester, Willows Health. As the pharmacist transformational lead and developmental lead, he oversees a team of 12 pharmacy professionals and is responsible for their professional development and ensuring clinical excellence through governance standards.

As a pharmacist primary care development adviser for the Royal College of General Practitioners, Niraj is also involved in the development and quality improvement of general practice and delivery of care. Having completed his PG Dip in clinical pharmacy, including independent prescribing, he is also currently the pharmacist training lead for the Willows academy working closely with medical and pharmacy schools to help train tomorrow’s healthcare professionals. Niraj has also completed the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education (CPPE) Primary Care Pharmacy Education Pathway (PCPEP) for primary care pharmacists.

His work within long term conditions and the projects he has been instrumental in have been acknowledged amongst some of the key lead drivers of change and improvement in local healthcare landscape and have rippled to influence change in the UK, providing him a platform to showcase the excellent progressive work which his entire team have all been instrumental in achieving. He is currently the primary care lead for the innovative iCKD/LUCID (Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland Chronic Kidney Disease Integrated Care Delivery) project and has worked closely with the UK Kidney Association (UKKA) to develop a peer-led consensus report on all future UKKA guidelines, along with helping mobilise the roll out of the KFRE calculations nationwide. Niraj has more recently founded the pioneering Willows Health Centre for CaReMe Excellence which aims to take population health management approach to lower local health inequalities and improve outcomes for high-risk patients in Leicester. Niraj’s team’s work in the proactive management for respiratory and cardiovascular-renal metabolic diseases has received merit and contributed to his team being named highly commended PCN of the Year and was used as examples of best practice, along with their role in research and new treatment discovery as a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) accredited centre.

Dr Oben is an Academic Clinician Scientist and Consultant Gastroenterologist-Hepatologist at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, London. He studied medicine at Oxford (St John’s College) and Stanford University, USA. He has a PhD in Pharmacology from University College London. His initial post-graduate medical training was at Imperial College London, followed by training in eye surgery before changing to Hepatology. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Hepatology at Johns Hopkins University, USA. He is an Associate Professor in Experimental Hepatology at King's College London. His main research interests are Obesity along with Liver disease in Obesity and type 2 Diabetes.