The Health Foundation appoints a new Policy Associate

The Health Foundation has appointed Gavin Larner as a new Policy Associate. Gavin will lead on a set of projects seeking to better understand how national and local policy can support NHS staff in improving quality and efficiency of care.

Gavin will join the Health Foundation on secondment from the Department of Health where he is Director of Quality, responsible for professional regulation, the Care Quality Commission, and the government responses to the Mid-Staffordshire public inquiry and the Morecombe Bay and Savile investigations. He has spent 21 years with the Department of Health, working in NHS strategy, pay and pensions, health inequality, heart disease, public health strategy, drugs misuse, communications as well as ministerial private offices. He has also had a spell in the NHS, helping to develop national and specialist services at South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust for a year.

Richard Taunt, Director of Policy at the Health Foundation, comments: ‘I am thrilled to welcome Gavin Larner - one of the finest policymakers working in health today - to our team. The quality of the NHS depends on its 1.4 million people; the success of national policy depends on understanding these staff. Yet as we highlighted in our Constructive Comfort report, how national policies impact on NHS staff is often a neglected field, and Gavin will play a key role in building on some of the work the Health Foundation has already done in this area.’

Gavin Larner comments: ‘I am delighted the Health Foundation is giving me the opportunity to focus on how national policy can support NHS staff in responding to the challenge of sustaining and improving quality of care. Policymakers spend a lot of time thinking about how best to influence institutional behaviour, but we need to complement that with a better understanding of the people who make these institutions what they are.’

Gavin is due to take up the role on Wednesday 27 May.

Media contact

Owen Taylor
T: 0207 257 8021
E: owen.taylor@health.org.uk 

The Health Foundation's Constructive Comfort report explores how best to design health policy in the NHS to accellerate improvements to health care.