The team
NHS Newham is a Primary Care Trust serving the UK’s most diverse Borough. The Communities of Health initiative, which was started in 2005 in partnership with the London Borough of Newham and the Forum for Health and Wellbeing, has received national and international recognition, and has been emulated as far afield as St Louis, Missouri, USA, and Burnley, East Lancashire. The initiative is fortunate to have a team as creative and diverse as the community which it serves.
Ian McDowell
Ian McDowell is Assistant Director for Community Ownership at NHS Newham. A former broadcaster and hospital chaplain, Ian has worked on creative community engagement projects for the Prime Minister’s Office of Public Services Reform. His interests include architecture, writing and reading poetry, and all things Spanish.
Shahid Sardar
Shahid Sardar is Community Ownership of Health Manager at NHS Newham. An English Literature graduate, born in Plaistow Hospital on Samson Street, Newham, Shahid is passionate about improving life for the community in which he grew up.
His work has been widely acknowledged, first at Mind (the National Association for Mental Health) where he used IT to promote the social inclusion of people experiencing mental health problems, and more recently when he was named last year as an NHS Champion in the NHS 60 Awards and received an HSJ Award for Communications.
Some of his latest work - the Newham Engagement toolkit - is on this microsite, and he would love to get some feedback from you on it!