Key Impacts
2025: Making mental health a key matter at the UN
In September 2025, mental health was discussed at the core of a UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting of Heads of State - the first time in UN history. This did not happen by accident. As Director of the Global Mental Health Action Network, I led the organisation's strategic role as the principal civil society convener for global mental health in the run-up to this meeting. From early 2024, we built and coordinated a Taskforce of all major international mental health organisations alongside an Action Group of national advocates and partners from 40 countries - functioning as the main platform for civil society throughout the process and the primary trusted partner for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and numerous governments. Throughout this work, disrupting the usual concentration of power was an explicit aim, not an aspiration. Young advocates who had never previously spoken in high-level settings were placed at the centre rather than the margin.
The Political Declaration that emerged from the HLM included mental health and psychosocial wellbeing as an integrated priority - reflecting all our collective positions - with commitments on community-based care, suicide prevention, child and adolescent mental health, and the social and commercial determinants of health. GMHAN's role in the process was recognised in a Lancet Psychiatry editorial on the importance of civil society partnerships.
2021: Conceptualising a socio-ecological model for public mental health
Working with the International Initiative of Mental Health Leadership (IIMHL), I developed an influential Socio-Ecological Model for Urban Public Mental Health - a framework for improving health by addressing the circumstances in which citizens are born, live, work, and age, with the voice of people at its core. The model has been widely adopted by health leaders and has informed guidelines for urban mental health initiatives for city leaders internationally.
2020: Bringing mental health into the COVID-19 conversations
I was one of the first in the world to raise the mental health implications of the COVID-19 pandemic - publishing my initial analysis with the Mental Health Foundation on 13 February 2020, three weeks before the UK government's own COVID-19 action plan and one month before the WHO declared a pandemic. I led a Coronavirus Health Promotion Hub that received more than 3 million visitors. I initiated a UK-wide research partnership with five universities and served as Principal Investigator for the Mental Health in the Pandemic study, which began over two weeks before the first UK lockdown and collected 17 waves of data over two years from more than 80,000 participants - 1.5 million data points in total. I engaged extensively with mainstream media and worked as an advisor to Department of Health officials in all four UK nations, informing national inquiries and local strategies. I was a member of Public Health England's COVID-19 Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Reference Cell and of the UK Government's Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B). In 2022, I co-chaired the Insights Panel on the future of society and mental health at the Post-COVID Summit at the European Parliament.
2019: Driving new regulations on body image
In 2019 I led the largest ever UK campaign on body image as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, managing teams producing content for the public, practitioners, and policymakers. I convened stakeholders on the emerging risks of body editing apps, resulting in the Google Play Store updating its developer guidelines to factor in mental health risks. I also co-led a significant policy campaign that resulted in legislation making it illegal to carry out injectable toxin and dermal filler procedures on under-18s in England for cosmetic purposes. Recognising my role in that change, I was asked by the Department of Health and Social Care to introduce the new law in its official launch video.
2019-2022: Changing the culture and support on mental health inequalities in Wales
As Director for Wales and England at the Mental Health Foundation, I oversaw the flagship reports commissioned in response to the economic risks of Brexit: "Supporting farming communities at times of uncertainty" and "Building resilience in the fishing sector in Wales", produced in partnership with Public Health Wales for the Welsh Government. Combining global evidence reviews with the collective views of stakeholders and people with lived experience from across both sectors, these were among the first policy frameworks anywhere to treat economic uncertainty itself as a mental health issue for rural communities. I subsequently worked with Public Health Wales on multiple occasions and was twice invited to give oral evidence to the Welsh Parliament on issues related to mental health inequalities. The traces of this work are visible in Welsh policy: the farming framework was cited in the Welsh Government's co-design of the Sustainable Farming Scheme, the flagship post-Brexit agricultural policy, now backed by over £1 billion of multi-year funding; the mental health inequalities inquiry named agricultural and fishing communities among the groups at greatest risk, a framing carried into Wales's 10-year Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2025–2035; and the Welsh Government now directly funds farmer mental health training and support. The reports continue to be cited internationally - in agromedicine, rural sociology, fisheries science, and by the UNDP-hosted Conscious Food Systems Alliance - as part of a wider shift that has since seen dedicated farmer wellbeing funds established at UK level.
2017: Initiating a city-wide initiative
I was a key player in the development of Thrive LDN, London's cross-sector public mental health programme. Commissioned by the Mayor of London's team, I led the horizon scanning and needs assessment before the initiative launched, mapping mental health inequalities and determinants across London boroughs - work published in the Lancet Psychiatry. I then oversaw coordinated community conversations across several London boroughs, hearing directly from citizens, local employees, and stakeholders on their priorities for improving mental health and reducing health inequalities. This work, done in partnership with the Greater London Authority (GLA), local authorities, public health teams, and local employers, directly informed GLA health investments and the Thrive LDN programme.
2016: Informing regulation for public health data
Working at the Department of Health, when the UK government trialled restrictions on electronic health record data in 2013, I led demonstrator reviews revealing - for the first time - how Real World Evidence (RWE) influences clinical guidelines and the likely impact of the proposed regulations. The care.data programme was subsequently scaled back, and a £1.7m partnership programme on RWE was established. When GDPR was introduced in 2016, I co-led an influencing campaign to the EU Parliament on public health data research - all our asks were met. I have also worked in a key development role with the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on its capability for post-marketing real world data trials, with applications used during the COVID-19 pandemic for rapid vaccine development and safety surveillance.
