Vanessa Powell-Hoyland

Job Title: Public Health Lead

Tel: 01302 734020

Email: vanessa.powell-hoyland@doncaster.gov.uk

I am the Programme Manager for Well Doncaster, a community led health and wealth approach to addressing inequalities. I have worked in the field of Public Health for over 16 years. Over this period, I have developed specialist skills, earning a Master’s degree in Public Health and becoming a Honorary Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU).

My portfolio over the past years covers the wider determinants of health, community development and resilience, healthy homes, locality commissioning and community prevention. As part of my role as Honorary Research Fellow at SHU and the Clinical Research Centre, I lead on identifying health and wellbeing priorities for Local Authorises in Yorkshire and Humber, enabling coproduction and person-centred approaches to research in practice and service evaluation. 

I am proud to be co-investigator for Public Involvement and Community Engagement (PICE) for Doncaster Health Determinants Research Collaboration funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR). The aim to help local authorities to become more research-active and to embed a culture of evidence-based decision making. We aim to reducing health inequalities and address the wider determinants of health (e.g., the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age in). 

My professional interests include Community Centred Approaches, Health, Wealth, and Social Inequalities. I am an extremely passionate person who believes health inequalities are unjust and that by working with our communities we can improve lives. You will hear me saying in every platform I attend: 

• We cannot and will not close the health and social gap without involving and hearing those most affected

• We need to design solutions that work using health intelligence, creativity and ensuring we involved communities from the start

•We cannot influence and sustain change without the support of our communities