Our Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees is responsible for the governance and strategy of the Patients Association. The Board is made up of 11 Trustees, who have full legal responsibility for the actions of the Patients Association. All trustees retire at the close of the third annual general meeting following their taking office and become eligible for re-election or re-appointment for a maximum of one full term and in, exceptional circumstances, for up to two additional years.

Chair

Ann Lloyd Keen RN NDN FQNI FAAN FRCN

Ann is a registered nurse and a former Health Minister. Ann is passionate about safe patient care, informed choice and patient partnership, and has more than 40 years healthcare experience.

During her time in Parliament, Ann served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department of Health in the Blair/Brown governments.

Ann holds numerous nursing awards and is an active campaigner on health inequalities and a strong advocate for the patient’s voice.

Julie Thallon - Vice Chair

Julie trained as a nurse in London and specialised in district nursing before a long career in NHS

 

management. She has worked across all types of NHS organisations including executive positions as Director of Nursing and Chief Operating Officer with acute trusts and as Director of Performance & Commissioning and Director of Quality for CCGs. Six years ago Julie established her own consultancy company and has been working as an independent consultant ever since; she is currently also a Non-Executive Director for the East of England Ambulance NHS Trust.

An experienced NHS leader and executive coach, Julie continues to provide management and development support on contract to NHS organisations across the country. Julie hopes to bring her wealth of NHS experience and expertise to support the Patients Association in its extremely important work supporting patients. Julie lives in Norfolk with her husband and a dog, a cat, three chickens and five sheep.

Don Brereton CB - Honorary Treasurer

Don’s main career was in the civil service. He worked in health and social services posts, social security and the Cabinet Office Efficiency Unit. In his final post, in the Department for Work and Pensions, Don's directorate covered disability rights and policy across Government and delivery of the key disability and carers' benefits.  Don was awarded a CB in the 2001 New Year’s Honours.

Don moved on from the civil service in 2003 to become director of the national charity - Motability. Since his retirement from full time work, Don has continued to work with the public and voluntary sector.  He served two terms as Chair of Carers UK and was a member and Vice Chair of the Standing Commission on Carers and a lay member of the NHS National Quality Board.

Don is a Trustee and Chair of the Motability Defined Benefit Pension Scheme. He is also a Non-executive Director of Walthamstow Cricket, Tennis and Squash Club

Don has a son, two daughters and seven grandchildren. His son, Sam, was born with Down’s syndrome.  Sam now enjoys supported living with two other young adults but Don remains Sam’s primary family carer.

Anna-Maria Rollin MBE

Maria has worked in the NHS throughout her professional career and spent 34 years as a consultant anaesthetist at Epsom General Hospital, where she still retains an honorary contract. She was Senior Vice-President of the Council of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

She has always had an interest in patient information and was co-editor of a prizewinning book on the subject. She was a Lead Performance Assessor in Anaesthesia for the GMC and is currently a GMC Associate and PLAB examiner. She has an interest in medicolegal matters, and has written expert reports for the GMC, NHS Resolution and the Medical Defence organisations. Most of her publications have been concerned with standard-setting, quality assurance, and safety.

Rachel King

Rachel is working as an International Evidence Manager for an international Multiple Sclerosis charity. She leads the Atlas of MS project which provides vital evidence that can be used in advocacy to improve the lives of people with MS around the world. Prior to this she ran her own market research and insight consultancy supporting not-for-profit organisations including patient organisations to help them understand their beneficiaries, employees/volunteers as well as other stakeholders better.

Rachel lives with two chronic conditions; asthma and hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) which brings her into contact with healthcare professionals on a regular basis. She is passionate that patients’ voices are heard to understand what is important to each individual and enable shared decision making with respect to care and treatment. True patient partnership can provide critical insight to drive change and implement improvements to ensure patients can ultimately live their best lives.

 

Fiona Browne

Fiona is passionate about clinicians working collaboratively in partnership empowering patients to live their life in the way they want to. As a patient with lupus (a life-long chronic disease where the immune system attacks healthy tissue and organs), Fiona sees a number of different health professionals on a regular basis, and so has a particular ‘user’ perspective which she hopes brings a broad perspective to decision making.

Fiona is Director of Education, Standards, and Development at the General Osteopathic Council, a statutory health professional regulator. She is particularly interested in themes of engagement, support, and community in healthcare supporting behaviour change and patient safety.

Suzanne White

Suzanne White is an experienced clinical negligence solicitor, partner, and Head of the Clinical Negligence Department at Leigh Day. She has a medical background and previously worked as a senior radiographer at King’s College Hospital. She went on to study Law and has specialised in this area of expertise since qualifying in 1999.

Suzanne is head of a department at Leigh Day and specialises solely in clinical negligence and runs a varied caseload of complex, maximum severity claims acting for injured patients. Besides being a lawyer, Suzanne is a passionate advocate of patients’ rights and has campaigned for patient safety throughout her career.

Meryl Davies

Meryl has held senior roles in a number of charities. After a decade in international development, she made the move to UK-based work when she took on the role of CEO of Re-engage, a national charity focussed on social isolation and loneliness experienced people over 75.

She is passionately committed to the importance of listening and involving people who are most impacted by the work of a charity but too often still don’t have a voice in finding solutions. She is particularly interested in including the voices of LGBTQ+ older people when developing health and well-being interventions.

Meryl is a trustee at YoungMinds, the mental health charity.

Wiqas Valji

Wiqas Valji qualified as pharmacist in 2007 and started his clinical career as a hospital pharmacist working for the NHS in London.

He then moved into healthcare information technology. For the last decade, he has worked for global IT software companies who provide software to the NHS. His extensive experience in this area has made him a champion of ensuring technology works for both patients and clinicians and contributing to better outcomes and experiences for patients.

Working for American and Swedish companies has given Wiqas exposure to international healthcare markets as well as the differing cultural and business practices.

Currently, Wiqas works as a freelance health IT consultant with an interest in electronic medication management system development and implementation as well as clinical decision support systems.

How trustees are appointed

Our Trustees are appointed for a three-year term, which is renewable for a second term. When a Trustee position becomes vacant it is evaluated against the existing skills, knowledge and experience on the Board. Trustee vacancies are advertised publicly.

Our committees

Members of our Governance Committee are:

• Fiona Browne Chair
• Julie Thallon
• Suzanne White
• Anna-Maria Rollin

Members of our Finance Committee are:

• Don Brereton Chair
• Ann Lloyd Keen
• Meryl Davies
• Wiqas Valji

The Chairs Committee members are:

• Ann Lloyd Keen, Chair
• Fiona Browne
• Don Brereton
• Julie Thallon

Scheme of delegation

Our scheme of delegation shows what authority the Board has delegated to committees, volunteers and staff under the powers of our Constitution. The scheme ensures the Trustees are able to fulfil their legal and constitutional duties, through delegation and monitoring.

Conflicts of interest

All Trustees must declare their interests, and any gifts or hospitality offered and received, and keep those declaration up to date. The Chief Executive maintains a log of any conflicts or hospitality offered. You can read our full policy.

Terms of reference

The terms of reference for our Board of Trustees and our Committees are available here.

Chief Executive - Rachel Power

Rachel has over 20 years’ experience of working in health and social care within the voluntary sector.

 

She joined the Patients Association as its Chief Executive in June 2017 and has overseen a significant period of change, establishing a new sen ior leadership team and a new three-year strategy to help drive the organisation forward.

She is passionate about empowering patients and speaking on their behalf to ensure the patient voice is heard and acted upon.

If you have any queries about the work of the Patients Association, or would like to contact the operational team for any reason, please email [email protected].

For information on how to contact our helpline, please see here.