Kate is the Lead Director of Public Health for the GMCA for Health Protection and Emergency Planning & Response, in addition to her substantive post as Director of Public Health for Wigan. Additionally, she is also Chief Emergency Planning Officer and the Council’s Chief Commissioner for Leisure Services and currently lead DPH for the GMHSCP for alcohol and substance misuse, harm reduction and health protection transformation, including the development of a multi-agency antimicrobial resistance programme for the conurbation. Kate has led the GM health protection sector-led improvement work and give evidence to the House of Commons Health Select Committee as part of their inquiry into Public Health functions in England post 2013. Kate co-chairs the GM Local Health Resilience Forum and the GM High Rise Taskforce set up by Mayor Burnham in response to the Grenfell Fire and she was one of the external experts consulted on the Scottish Government’s national public health review.
Kate attended Manchester High School and read Medicine at Manchester University and was awarded the RCGP Professor Patrick Byrne Prize for General Practice. She has an MSc in Epidemiology and Health and was awarded Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health 2006 as well as being an honorary Professorship at Salford University where she is a co-researcher on the NIHR-funded evaluation of GM’s innovative Communities in Charge of Alcohol programme and she is a visiting professor at Chester University.