Dr Neil Squires is Director of Global Public Health for Public Health England, with
responsibility for PHE’s global health activity. Neil has spent the majority of his career
working internationally, including being the Head of Profession for Health at the
Department for International Development (2011-2014). He spent 4 years working in
Mozambique, including being the donor lead for multi-agency support to Mozambique’s
Health Sector Wide Approach (SWAp). He spent 2 years working in Bangladesh, and
was again donor lead for a multi-donor health sector programme. Neil spent 5 years as
the Senior Health Adviser for West and North Africa, covering Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra
Leone and working on DFID’s Africa Regional Programmes. Other roles have include 3
years working at the European Commission, during which time he developed the EU
Strategy on Human Resources for Health in Developing Countries, 2 years as a District
Health Officer in Malawi, and a year working in Leprosy control in India.
Neil completed his public health training in the North West and was a Consultant in
Public Health in Liverpool, prior to joining DFID. Neil has been a Board Member of the
Global Health Workforce Alliance and was co-chair of one of eight World Health
Organisation Working Groups which contributed to the development of the Global
Human Resources for Health Strategy. He is also International Registrar of the UK
Faculty of Public Health, and Chair of the Governance Committee of the Malaria
Consortium.
Global health is focused on improving health and achieving health equity for all people worldwide – meaning working towards the absence of avoidable, unfair, or remediable differences among groups of people. Many health issues and concerns transcend national boundaries and require collaboration between countries to address them and in this blog we explain the role PHE plays.
