President
Janet Russell OBE
Janet was elected President of the CIEH for a three-year period with effect from 1 January 2012.
She qualified as an environmental health officer in 1977. A career in local government culminated in 10 years as Director of Environment, Transport and Property at Kirklees Metropolitan Council where she was responsible for corporate management of the Council as part of the Executive team and strategic management of services employing 5000 staff. During her ten years at Kirklees the council was awarded 'Council of the Year' and 'European EMAS organisation of the Year'.
Janet has been active in national fora including the Better Regulation Task Force, HELA, DEFRA’s Ministerial Challenge Panel and various LGA environment and regulation advisory groups. She was awarded the OBE for services to Better Regulation and Health and Safety.
Since leaving local government in 2011 she has been a non executive Director of a Community Interest Company, which provides advice and action on energy efficiency and is Chair of its subsidiary YES renewables, which is a small but growing renewable energy installation company.
She is the CIEH's first female president.
Vice Presidents
The CIEH appoints a number of Honorary Vice Presidents. These are notable individuals who, through their position and status, are of particular value and assistance in helping us achieve our objectives. Their duties include promoting the CIEH, supporting our initiatives, making introductions, identifying issues of concern for consideration and exchanging information.
Our current Vice Presidents are:
Professor Graham Ashworth CBE
Professor Ashworth is a former President of the Foundation for Environmental Education in Europe, and a former member of the UK Round Table on Sustainable Development. He is a past President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Royal Town Planning Institute. Formerly he was Chairman of Going for Green and ENCAMS (Environmental Campaigns). As a former Professor of Urban Environmental Studies at the University of Salford, he is an expert in urban regeneration; and his research is in UK and European Environmental Policy at Salford University Law School.
Rt Hon Kevin Barron MP
Kevin Barron was elected as Member of Parliament for the Rother Valley in 1983 when the constituency was divided into two. On entering Parliament, Kevin was a member of the Select Committee on Energy. In 1985 he became PPS to the then leader of the Labour Party Neil Kinnock and during the late eighties and nineties served as Shadow Minister for Energy, Employment and later Health. He also became chair of the Group of Yorkshire Labour MPs.
Kevin’s interest in public health was well known and in 1993 he was the originator of a Private Members Bill to ban the advertising and promotion of tobacco products.
In July 1996 he was duly appointed to the newly created position of Shadow Minister for Public Health. He also chaired the Parliamentary Labour Party Health Committee.
In 1997 Kevin was selected to sit on the Intelligence and Security Committee which oversees the Intelligence Services and is the only committee to report directly to the Prime Minister. He also chaired several All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG), including the Pharmaceutical Industry, Smoking and Health and Infertility. These he has subsequently relinquished but still chairs APPGs on The Film Industry, Earth Sciences and British/Bulgaria. 2001 saw Kevin appointed as a Privy Councillor.
After winning his sixth election for Member of Parliament for the Rother Valley, Kevin became chair of the Health Select Committee. He is also a lay member of the GMC.
Professor Sir Kenneth Calman KCB FRCS
Sir Kenneth Calman is Chancellor of the University of Glasgow. He graduated in medicine in Glasgow and became Professor of Oncology in 1974. In 1984 he became Dean of Postgraduate Medicine and Professor of Postgraduate Medical Education at the University of Glasgow. In 1989 he was appointed Chief Medical Officer in Scotland and in September 1991 he became Chief Medical Officer in England. He was a member of the Executive Board of the World Health Organisation, and it’s Chairman from 1998-99. He was Vice Chancellor and Warden of the University of Durham from 1998 until 2007. He was a Member of the Statistics Commission from 1999 until 2007. He is a Trustee of Cancer Research UK and a member of the Board of the British Library. He is Chair of the National Cancer Research Institute. His most recent books are “A study of storytelling, humour and learning in medicine” and “Medical Education: Past present and future”.
Dr June Crown CBE
Dr Crown is a former President of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine. Her career has focused on public health medicine as Area Health Officer in Brent and Harrow, Director of Public Health in Bloomsbury and Director of the South East Institute of Public Health. She has frequently acted as a special adviser to the World Health Organisation and overseas governments. She is a Vice President of Age Concern England, a Trustee of Help the Aged, Deputy Chairman of the University of Brighton and President of Medact (a charitable organisation of doctors, nurses and other health professionals who are concerned about major threats to health such as conflict, poverty and environmental degradation).
Brian Hanna CBE FCIEH
Brian Hanna was elected President of the CIEH in January 2002 for a three-year term. Now retired, Brian was previously Chief Executive and Town Clerk of Belfast City Council, where he was instrumental in developing and implementing urban regeneration programmes and building effective partnerships between the private and public sector. He is a member of several professional and government advisory organisations and a former member of the Sustainable Development Commission.
Brian chaired the President’s Commission to investigate how the environmental health profession can rise to the challenge of the changes that have taken place in local government over the last two decades. The resulting Hanna Report was published in April 2005 and sets out a broad range of policy implications for the CIEH. In 2004 he was appointed as Chair of the British Council’s Northern Ireland Advisory Committee and in 2008 as Deputy-Chair of the Northern Ireland Science Park Foundation.
Baroness Sally Hamwee
Raised to the peerage as Baroness Hamwee of Richmond upon Thames in 1991, Sally Hamwee has been the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for local government issues since 1991. She served for many years as a councillor in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and was a member of the London Planning Advisory Committee from 1986 to 1994. She has also been Joint President of Association of London Government and Chair of the Greater London Assembly. She is a member of the All Party Group on Economic Affairs and is currently the secretary of the Associate Parliamentary Group on Environmental Health.
Morris McAllister
Morris served in the public service government for 41 years and worked in both central and local government. He was the NI Director for the Food Standards Agency and a member of its Executive Management Board for 8 years until his retirement in September 2008. Prior his appointment at the FSA, Morris was the Chief Environmental Health Officer at the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety where he provided professional policy advice to Ministers on the full range of environmental health issues and chaired both the NI Chief EHOs Group and the UK government Chief EHOs Group. He is a strong advocate of the key role that EHPs play in public health protection and enhancement.
Professor Tim Lang
Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at City University's Centre for Food Policy in London. He specialises in how policy affects the shape of the food supply chain, what people eat and the social, health and civic outcomes. Over 30 years, he has worked in a variety of posts in education, research and public interest organisations. Since 1994, as Europe’s only Professor of Food Policy, he has concentrated on long-term strategic issues in food policy, linking human and environmental health with social justice.
Since 2006 he has been Land Use and Natural Resources Commissioner on the Government's Sustainable Development Commission. He was elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health in 2001 and won the BBC Radio 4 Derek Cooper Food Award in 2003 and the Caroline Walker Trust award in 2002. From 1999 to 2005 he was chair of Sustain, the UK alliance of 100+ NGOs promoting better food. He is the author/co-author of 120+ articles and reports and 10 books, including The Atlas of Food (with Erik Millstone, 2008, 2nd edition) and Food Wars (with Michael Heasman, 2004).
Derek Osborn CBE
Derek Osborn served for 30 years in the Civil Service, including six years as Director General for Environmental Protection at the Department of the Environment until retirement in January 1996. He represented the United Kingdom and was Chair of the Management Board of the European Environment Agency (1995-1999) and was on the Board of the Environment Agency for England and Wales (1996-98). He is a Non-executive Director of Severn Trent PLC, Chair of Jupiter Global Green Investment Trust and is involved in several environmental organisations.
John Spence
John Spence is Chair of Welsh Food Advisory Committee and is a member of the Board of the Food Standards Agency. Prior to retirement in 2003, he was acting Chief Executive at Swansea Council where he had previously been Director of Environment and Health. He has been an adviser to the Welsh Local Government Association and is a former Chair of one of the regional Drug and Alcohol Action Teams (DAATs) in Wales. He has also been an adviser to the Welsh Assembly’s Chief Medical Officer’s Public Health Review Board and has served on a number of other national advisory bodies. He has previously held the post of Chair of the Welsh Collaboration for Health and Environment and the Society of Public Protection Officers (Wales).
Joan Walley MP
Joan Walley has been Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North since 1987. Following a career in local government, she became opposition spokesperson on Environmental Protection and Development (1988-90) and Transport (1990-95), and has served on the Environmental Select Committee since 1997. Her special interests include the environment and health.