Christine Keen Director of Commissioning

About me

Christine is a GenerationQ Fellow and Director of Commissioning at NHS England.

She has been the Director of Commissioning at the NHS England Area Team for Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear since 2012.

She began her NHS management career in 1997, as practice manager at a large GP surgery in Cumbria. In 2005 she left practice management to run a consortium of 39 general practices focusing on commissioning secondary care services for around 250,000 patients.

From 2008-12, Christine was Associate Director of Primary Care at NHS Cumbria, with responsibility for commissioning, contract and performance management across all primary care providers.

Her qualifications include a postgraduate diploma in primary health care management and an MA in the history of medicine.

Going into GenerationQ, one of Christine’s aims was to examine and develop her personal leadership skills. 'It felt like the right time in my career to hold a mirror up to myself and reflect on my abilities as a leader, to enable me to identify things to work on and become effective. I’d say the programme exceeded my expectations of what it would do for me. It’s given me a much deeper sense of confidence and I think this played a big part in me applying for my current job and being chosen for the role.'

Christine was also attracted to the programme because of the opportunity it offered to put learning into practice in a supported environment. 'It was very inspiring to be able to study the theory and then apply it right away in the workplace. And I really valued being able to share my experiences with peers from around the country – everyone brought bring different perspectives and insights that we were all able to learn from.'

Throughout her career, Christine has pursued a passion for improving the quality of primary care services. She sees her current role as enabling and supporting clinical commissioning group colleagues to deliver improvements in primary care.

'One thing that GenerationQ got me thinking a lot about is how we can empower staff and stakeholders to drive quality improvement forward. The fellowship helped me to understand that although the NHS is complex and leadership is sometimes messy, these things aren’t a barrier to improvement. Effective engagement is the key to embedding changes into working practices and making a difference to patient care.'