Qualifications: BA (Hons), MA, PhD, FRSA, FHEA, FInstLM

Ben is an experienced researcher, teacher, and advisor in ethics, public health, and social policy, mostly in the mental health sphere, which has enabled him to form strong contacts and engage with national and international stakeholders at various levels.

His PhD thesis kickstarted his background in health improvement by offering a novel framework of moral sequencing and decision-making to justify early intervention to prevent harm.

Ben is a former Advisor (and Research Associate) to the Mental Health Policy Commission for whom he co-authored a national peer-reviewed report with the Rt. Hon. Professor Paul Burstow, published in Westminster in July 2018 (see https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/mhpc). He led an international call for evidence and liaised with national and international stakeholders (including expert interviews and roundtables) to determine how the NHS, PHE, etc. could collaborate and innovate. He leant that there is (and their report established) the need to take a whole-system approach to intervening early across a number of domains to prevent the occurrence/entrenchment of poor mental health.

As former Research Fellow in Mental Health on a NIHR funded project in the Health Services Management Centre (University of Birmingham) Ben helped to assess the role of the voluntary sector in mental health crisis care in England. This involved scoping third sector involvement nationally, looking at its distinctiveness compared to statutory services, and learning and reporting on the need for the NHS to integrate with the third sector to offer improved crisis care.

Currently, Ben is a Research Fellow in FGM in the Institute of Applied Health Research (University of Birmingham) on another NIHR funded project to report on the experiences of FGM survivors, their partners, and healthcare professionals, and report on the timing of deinfibulation surgery. As Trustee of two charities (a Council for Voluntary Services and a homelessness prevention charity), he also has joint strategic oversight of driving improvement across domains locally, which has helped him to understand local improvement challenges. He also teaches across the University of Birmingham.

Ben's experience, expertise, and varied background uniquely places him at the intersection of academic health research and driving whole-system integration and change in policy to drive improvement and ensure better health outcomes.