Thursday 7th May Morning Plenary

#cha2026

Morning Plenary - Uffington Suite

Ellen Rule, Chief Executive Herefordshire & Worcestershire Health & Care

Thursday 7th May 9.35 - 9.50am

Ellen joined the Herefordshire and Worcestershire NHS Trust on 1st May 2025 as Chief Executive, bringing with her a wealth of experience from her previous role as Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Strategy and Transformation at NHS Gloucestershire.

Ellen has a strong track record of working in collaboration with a wide range of partners, including the voluntary and community sector. She is known for being driven, dedicated and passionate about making things better for people, whist caring and compassionate to the core.

A key part of Ellen’s work in Gloucester has been establishing a Clinical Programme Group (CPG) approach to service improvement and redesign, alongside clinicians, other health and care professionals and patient representatives. She has always placed a real focus on preventing ill health, developing integrated person-centred care and supporting people to maintain independence.

From Community Hospitals to Neighbourhood Health: A Strategic Reset

Executive summary

Community hospitals have spent decades justifying their existence. The emergence of neighbourhood health policy offers a pivotal opportunity to redefine their purpose and value. In a system like Herefordshire and Worcestershire – serving around 800,000 people across a large, rural footprint with an ageing population and limited transport – traditional hospital‑centric models are increasingly inefficient. If neighbourhood health cannot work here, it is unlikely to work anywhere.

Neighbourhood health policy is no longer aspirational; it sets clear expectations for shifting care from hospitals to communities, from reactive treatment to prevention, and from organisational silos to integrated neighbourhood teams. Community hospitals are neither explicitly protected nor replaced by this agenda, but they are implicitly challenged: remain small, sub‑scale replicas of acute care? or evolve into essential neighbourhood assets?

This talk argues that community hospitals can become neighbourhood health platforms – anchoring integrated neighbourhood teams, enabling out‑of‑hospital diagnostics and consultant outreach, hosting prevention and voluntary sector partnerships, and supporting digital and home‑based care at scale. For systems, the strategic choice is clear: stabilise the status quo, or redesign community hospitals as engines of neighbourhood health. The future will be shaped not by policy alone, but by leadership and communities that are willing to let these trusted local institutions evolve.

Julie Sharma, Retired Senior Healthcare Executive

Thursday 7th May 11.40 - 11.55am

Julie Sharma is a recently retired senior health and care leader with almost 50 years’ experience in the NHS and community services. She has worked across all aspects of NHS Commissioning, Planning and Delivery and most recently served as Interim Chief Executive of Sirona care & health, where her leadership supported the organisation through a period of transformation and delivery of integrated adult and children’s community services. Julie has a deep commitment to person centred care and improving outcomes for people, families and colleagues across health and social care contexts.

Community Hospitals Beyond Buildings: Reclaiming Purpose in a Changing NHS

This session reframes the conversation about community hospitals by looking beyond physical buildings and organisational models to the true purpose of community healthcare. Aimed at clinicians and managers working across community settings, it will focus on the shared mission that unites the workforce: supporting people to recover, rehabilitate, and remain independent for as long as possible. Rather than concentrating on centrally driven structures or shifting policy frameworks, the session will encourage reflection on the values, behaviours, and everyday decisions that shape meaningful care. It will explore how individuals and teams—regardless of role or setting—can influence outcomes by staying grounded in this purpose. Attendees will be invited to reconnect with what community care stands for and consider how this collective focus can drive better experiences and outcomes for the populations they serve.

Professor Sir Chris Whitty,

Chief Medical Officer and Expert Advisor

Thursday 7th May 11.55 - 12.25pm - REMOTE

Professor Sir Chris Whitty is Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, the UK government’s Chief Medical Adviser and head of the public health profession.

Chris is a practising NHS Consultant Physician at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, and a visiting professor at Gresham College.

Chris is an epidemiologist and has undertaken research and worked as a doctor in the UK, Africa and Asia. He was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) before becoming CMO and remains an honorary professor.

Chris was the interim Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) from December 2024 to June 2025. He was Chief Scientific Adviser for DHSC from January 2016 to August 2021, with overall responsibility for the department’s research and development, including being head of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the government’s major funder of clinical, public health, social care and translational research.

Chris was the interim Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2017 to 2018, including during the Novichok poisonings. Before that, he was the Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for International Development (DFID), which included leading technical work on the West Africa Ebola outbreak and other international emergencies.