Spotlight on Long COVID: Part 2

Dr Bola Owolabi MB BS DFFP MRCGP MSc is Director of Health Inequalities at NHS England and NHS Improvement. She works as a General Practitioner in the Midlands.

Bola has particular interests in reducing health inequalities through Integrated CareModels, Service Transformation and using data & insights for Quality Improvement.

Bola has held various leadership roles at the local, system and national levels. She was until recently, National Specialty Advisor for Older People and Integrated Person Centred-Care at NHS England and Improvement where she led the Anticipatory Care Workstream of the National Ageing Well Programme. She has worked with teams across NHS England/Improvement and the Department of Health and Social Care as part of the Covid 19 Pandemic response. 

She is an alumnus of Ashridge Executive Education/Hult International Business School and holds a Masters degree with distinction in Leadership (Quality Improvement). 

She holds an NHS Leadership Academy Award in Executive Healthcare Leadership for Clinicians. 

Bola is a generation Q Fellow of the Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK.

Dr Elaine Maxwell is a Former Scientific Advisor at NIHR. Prior to this she was a content lead in the NIHR’s dissemination centre and is the lead author on the two dynamic reviews of evidence on Long Covid, published in October 2020 and March 2021. 

 Elaine has also been both an Executive Director and a Non-Executive Director in NHS Foundation Trusts. 

Graham Burns began his academic life as a mathematician studying to post graduate level in Cambridge. After deciding the raw pursuit of wealth in the City would not plug the existentialist gap, he explored a number of other diversions including work as an actor, voluntary work in India and a year in the Lord Chancellors Department in Westminster before taking up Medicine.

In 2002 he was appointed as Consultant Physician and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Royal Victoria Infirmary and Newcastle University.

His clinical work (before the pandemic) has principally been in COPD and asthma, including the specialist severe asthma service. He lectures nationally and internationally on lung physiology.

Although a full-time NHS clinician has supervised a number of PhD students, in several areas including the psychological impact of chronic lung disease.

At the start of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, he set up his hospital’s Respiratory Support Unit and designed the respiratory support escalation protocol, later published by the British Thoracic Society as a national guide. He published the first paper highlighting the benefits of CPAP in COVID respiratory failure.

Early after the first wave of the pandemic, he set up a post-COVID Assessment Clinic with MDT review including physical and psychological components of the condition. This model formed the basis for the subsequent National Service Specification on which he was a principal advisor to NHSE. He was recently appointed as National Specialist Advisor on Long Covid to NHSE

President of the British Thoracic Society (2020-21)

Dr Kiren Collison is a GP in Oxfordshire and the interim Deputy Medical Director for Primary Care for NHS England and Improvement. Kiren is also the Clinical Chair of Oxfordshire CCG, Co-Chair of her ICS Primary Care Board and board member of NHS Clinical Commissioners. She trained at Cambridge University and University College London. Kiren has a particular interest in strengthening primary care, preventing illness and tackling health inequalities. By writing a weekly magazine health column, Kiren is also keen to spread important health messages to a national and international audience. 

Graham Lawton is a staff writer and columnist at New Scientist, and the author of The Origin of (Almost) Everything. After a degree in biochemistry and a MSc in science communication, both from Imperial College, Graham Lawton landed at New Scientist, where he has been as a columnist and feature writer. His writing and editing have won a number of awards. He is interested in the environment, wildlife, biomedicine, food and all things Finnish.   

Professor Roz Shafran is Chair in Translational Psychology at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She is an honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist, a member of the Health Professions Council and an accredited therapist with the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy. Professor Shafran founded the Charlie Waller Institute of Evidenced Based Psychological Treatment in 2007 at the University of Reading and was its director until 2012. She is a Trustee of the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust, Patron of 'No Panic' and recipient of prizes such as the Positive Practice 'Making a Difference' Award, British Psychological Society Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Practice and Marsh Award for Mental Health for research that has made a difference to clinical practice. Professor Shafran is a former associate editor of 'Behaviour Research and Therapy' and currently serve on the NIHR HTA Mental Health panel and am a NICE Expert Advisor. 

Darren Brown is a cis-gendered (pronouns he/him/his), gay, white man, of mixed English and Irish heritage, living in London UK. Darren is a clinical academic Physiotherapist specialising in HIV, disability and rehabilitation. Darren contracted COVID-19 in March 2020 and is living with Long COVID and associated episodic disability. Darren is the Chair and co-founder of Long COVID Physio. Darren's Long COVID activities include national and international education, advocacy, research, and policy, including with World Health Organization and World Physiotherapy.

Susanne Nielsen, BSc, MPH, is a Consultant in Rehabilitation for WHO Europe Office. Trained and worked in the UK as a physiotherapist, with a special interest in neurology and respiratory. Susanne has worked as a project manager and rehabilitation consultant in various humanitarian projects in China and Haiti, as well as working with WHO in Mongolia on rehabilitation post Stroke and Myocardial Infarction.

She is an Education Committee member of the International Spinal Cord Society and with specific support to work on capacity building in spinal cord injury rehabilitation in Mongolia.

Lastly, Susanne has worked in Denmark; clinically in neurosurgery as well as research and development. During the Covid-19 Pandemic, she has also been working in the acute setting with Covid-19 patients both in the intensive and semi-intensive care unit up until discharge from the hospital.

Lesley Macniven MA, FCIPD, is a non-fiction writer, coach and freelance consultant, passionate about workplace equality. Her work delivering Diversity, Inclusion and Change projects was interrupted when she caught Covid19 at work in early March 2020. While recovering, Lesley became a moderator, campaigner, spokesperson then Steering Group member for an emerging patient-led community: Long Covid Support (now a UK charity). She led a similar campaign in Scotland, co-founding offshoot Long Covid Scotland in August 2020. 

Patient-led campaigning has seen progress in the areas of rehab, research and recognition for the patient-named, poorly understood phenomenon ‘Long Covid’.  As the pandemic progressed it became evident support would also be needed to retain and support workers catching Covid19 that went on to experience ongoing symptoms to make a steady and sustainable return to work.

In early 2021 Lesley became Chair of a dedicated Long Covid Employment Working Group and joined the Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM) led multidisciplinary Long Covid task force.  Both groups have been proactively responding to the impact of Long Covid on the health of our workforce.

Employment group members all bring impressive professional change management, occupational health and vocational rehabilitation skills to their lived experience advocacy roles. The research, collate, disseminate, and communicate insights and information to members and external agencies. Under Lesley’s leadership, they have formed a consultancy www.LongCovidWork.co.uk to pool their multidisciplinary perspectives and resources to co-design innovative, effective solutions to the impacts of Long Covid on individuals and organisations. Our website contains links to resources including those developed working with organisational partners the CIPD, SOM and The TUC. These include Long Covid resources for managers, employers and Union reps through webinars, podcasts and training interventions.

Lt Col Mark Cranley is a dual-trained consultant in Rehabilitation Medicine and Sport & Exercise Medicine. He trained in London and worked at DMRC Headley Court and now at DMRC Stanford Hall following the unit relocation. He has been part of the Defence COVID rehabilitation and recovery services for military personnel with post COVID symptoms. He has been a co-author of published papers on post COVID rehabilitation with further work under submission.