A tribute to Bob Sang

Bob Sang, a great friend and contributor to the Health Foundation, passed away on Friday 5 June, aged just 61, after a short illness.

The UK’s first Professor of Patient and Public Involvement, Bob worked at The King’s Fund before launching his own consultancy, Sang Jacobsson. Recently, he was also special advisor to the Health Select Committee Inquiry into Patient and Public Involvement in Health.

We were privileged to work with Bob over many years, and will always be grateful for his support. The impact of our work is much stronger thanks to Bob’s constant reminder to put patients at the heart of our work.

Bob was a generous advisor and critical friend to our Leadership Fellows award scheme; his intelligence, insight and challenge are warmly remembered by many. A natural connector of people, Bob recruited excellent patient quality advisors to the scheme, and helped us find exciting, challenging speakers.

In the early part of this year, Bob acted as an external assessor on our new Closing the Gap scheme. As always, he championed the role of patients and families in quality improvement. Most importantly, he helped many of our staff and award holders connect with people of mutual interests.

One of Bob’s final articles was recently published on Health Policy Insight, and refers to our Leadership Fellows and Co-creating Health programmes. The article appears with a moving tribute by the Editor, Andy Cowper.

One of our own leadership development consultants says of Bob: ‘I reckon there are not many higher purposes for living your life – or more powerful legacies – than being a conduit for joining people together in many, many small alliances for making the world a bit better.’