Women’s Health in the North of England: Turning evidence into action
Join us at the next North of England Cross-Sector Hub event on Women’s Health in the North.
Wed 7th October
Join us for a free, interactive, networking event hosted by the Northern Health Science Alliance and the Academy of Medical Sciences, bringing together leading voices in Women’s Health from research, the NHS, policy and industry.
📆 Wednesday, October 7, 2026
📍Sheffield Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, 10.30am – 3pm
Together, we will surface the inequalities highlighted in the Woman of the North report, combining expert keynote discussions and system-level debate with focused deep-dives on women’s health across the life course, data-led research, and innovation.
Expect bold insights, fresh collaboration, and clear, actionable priorities that translate evidence into delivery-ready priorities for the government’s renewed Women’s Health Strategy.
Agenda (subject to change)
The programme will include keynote contributions, collaborate roundtable discussions, and an interactive panel debate, with opportunities to engage directly with stakeholders from across sectors.
Speakers
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- Jessica Shilton – Jess is a qualified and experienced career practitioner. Having previously completed funded research investigating student and graduate career trajectories, she is now conducting research for the PROMOTE project, as well as establishing its mentoring scheme and intersectoral exchange activity. PROMOTE is a two-year Medical Research Council funded project focussed on mid-career health data scientists’ progression into leadership. It is based in the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics at the University of Leeds, and works in collaboration with Universities of York, Sheffield, Teesside and Newcastle.
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- Dr Claire Sullivan – Dr Sullivan is the Deputy Director for Health, Wellbeing & Workforce at the DHSC for the North East and Yorkshire region. She is a registered public health consultant and has held roles in the NHS, Local Government and Civil Service. Claire is passionate about women’s health issues and works closely with the national women’s health teams in DHSC and NHSE on the The Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England Across North East and North Cumbria she has been instrumental in driving work forward on women’s health. She organised the first ever women’s health conference in the region and initiated the development of a Women’s health profile – NENC which has informed the national data dashboard. She has provided supervision to public health registrars to produce a women’s healthcare needs assessment, an audit of work in NHS settings to prevent violence against women and girls and led the development of a contraception plan for the region.
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- Dr Eva Caamaño Gutierrez – Dr Caamaño Gutierrez is Co-Director of the Computational Biology Facility at the University of Liverpool, an MRC-funded Biomedical Data Science Leader, and Co-Chair of BioinfoCoreLeaders UK. She holds a BSc in Biotechnology and an MSc and PhD in Systems Biology, and leads a multidisciplinary team delivering computational biology, data science and bioinformatics across a broad portfolio of health and life-science research, including numerous projects in women’s health. Through national leadership roles, including ELIXIR-UK, she contributes to strengthening UK data capabilities and research infrastructure. Eva is a strong advocate for a positive and sustainable research culture, working to improve recognition of computational expertise, expand access to training and mentorship, support career development for data scientists and research technical professionals, and promote inclusive, collaborative and reproducible interdisciplinary research.
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- Professor Dame Lesley Regan – Dame Lesley Regan is Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Imperial College at St Mary’s campus, She has chaired Wellbeing of Women since 2020, hosting webinars and debates on many aspects of women’s health across the span of the lifecourse in order to promote funding for the charity’s research, education and advocacy programmes. Professor Regan is a globally recognised authority in women’s health, having been President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists from 2016 to 2019 and Honorary Secretary of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) from 2018-2023.
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- Professor Louise Kenny – Professor Kenny is the Executive Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Health & Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool. She was the founding Director of the Science Foundation Ireland funded Irish Centre for Fetal & Neonatal Translational Research and was Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at Cork University Maternity Hospital, where she worked as a Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist from 2006-2018. She is Deputy Chair of the Liverpool Health Partners; Chair of the Population & Systems Medicine (PSMB) Board at the Medical Research Council and REF Main Panel A Chair. Louise is also the founder and PI of the Wellcome Trust funded programme Children Growing up in Liverpool (CGULL) – the first new birth cohort in the UK for two decades. Louise has received numerous awards for her work and most recently she was elected a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2022 New Years Honours for services to research in the NHS.
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- Dr Oluwaseun Esan – Dr Esan is a Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Liverpool. Her research examines the patterning of ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in mothers and their children, where these overlap, and where nuanced differences emerge using large health datasets alongside a participatory approach centring women’s voices, to identify how policy worsens or improves health outcomes. She began her career in infectious diseases working in former divisions of the UK Health Security Agency before moving into academia through a PhD at Oxford and NIHR School for Public Health postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Liverpool. She is driven by a passion for connecting research, policy and practice to ensure evidence-driven policy action
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- Professor Suzanne Mason – Professor Mason is Director of R&D at Barnsley Hospital NHSFT. Her main research interests are applying the power of routine data for research and innovation. She also has extensive experience in evaluating complex interventions in emergency and urgent care. She is the Academic Director for Data Connect at the University of Sheffield and South Yorkshire Lead for the NHSE Yorkshire and Humber Subnational Secure Data Environment.
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- Professor Clare Bambra – Clare is a Professor of Public Health, at Newcastle University and author of Health Divides and An Unequal Pandemic. She leads the health and care inequalities theme for the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaborations and is a Senior Investigator in the NIHR ARC North East and North Cumbria. Clare led the Health for Wealth report and co-led the Covid19 reports.
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- Dr Judith Rankin – Dr Rankin is Professor of Maternal and Child Health at Newcastle University whose research focuses on the health of vulnerable maternal populations, risk factors in pregnancy, pregnancy loss, and outcomes for children with complex needs. She is co-lead for Research and Capacity Development within the NIHR Maternity Disparities Consortium which aims to reduce maternity inequalities, improve outcomes, access, and experience of services. She leads the Supporting Children, Women and Families theme within the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East North Cumbria and is a member of the NIHR School for Public Health. Judith is a member of the Collaboration Advisory Group: Women’s Health, chairs the NIHR Doctoral Committee and is a NIHR Senior Investigator. Until recently, Judith was Dean of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at Newcastle University and co-chaired the Network of EDI Academic Leads. Judith was awarded an OBE in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours for services to Maternal and Child Health and Research Inclusion.
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