Compassion in action: Co-creating compassionate flourishing communities

Dr Julian Abel is a recently retired consultant in palliative care, and has worked for over three years as joint-leader of the roll-out of the Frome project with Dr Helen Kingston, the town’s lead GP, and is currently leading the implementation of the Frome Model in Wales.

He is Vice-President of Public Health Palliative Care International and, as a recognised expert on Compassionate Communities, has made presentations on the Frome model in Europe, the USA and Australasia.

He co-authored The Compassion Project - a case for hope and human kindness from the town that beat loneliness. 

Dr Margaret Hannah is Director of Health Programmes for International Futures Forum (IFF), an educational charity registered in Scotland that provides practical hope and enables wise initiative. 

She has a background in medicine, specialising in public health. She is co-author of The Future Public Health (Open University Press 2012) and Humanising Healthcare: Patterns of Hope for a System under Strain (Triarchy Press 2014). 

In addition to her work with IFF, she a visiting professor of public health at Robert Gordon University and honorary senior lecturer at St Andrew's University.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, she has worked part-time in the National Health Service in Scotland to support efforts to eliminate the infection.

Dr Frances da Cunha is a recently retired general practitioner, a fellow of the Royal College of GPs, and has been involved in medical education and GP higher training for many years.

She has been leading the Mendip Symphony project which is based on the Frome Medical Practice model of enhanced primary care to prevent unplanned admissions into hospital. It involves multi-disciplinary teams working with community services, adult social care and outside providers and offers unified care plans and patient empowerment.

After serving as Director of the Department of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health, WHO Geneva, Anthony Costello returned to University College London in June 2018. Previously he was Director of the Institute for Global Health at UCL and founder of an international charity, Women and Children First.

He is co-chair of the international  Lancet Countdown for Climate Action and Health, and senior advisor to a new WHO Unicef Lancet Commission Countdown to 2030 on ‘A Future for our Children?’.

In May 2016 he received the BMJ Lifetime Achievement Award. His book ‘The Social Edge. The Power of Sympathy Groups for our Health, Wealth and Sustainable Future’ was published in November 2018.