Dr Paul Cosford will be the Director for Health Protection for Public Health England when it is established in April 2013. He is currently Acting Chief Executive and Director of Health Protection Services for the Health Protection Agency. Over the past two years, Paul has introduced new approaches to the delivery of health protection outcomes, leadership, quality and innovation to ensure the quality of the services provided by the Health Protection Services Division which includes over 900 clinical, scientific and support staff. As Acting Chief Executive he is responsible for the transfer of all the HPA’s functions to Public Health England.

Previously Paul was the Regional Director of Public Health for the East of England, leading an integrated public health and social care team between the NHS East of England, the Department of Health and the Regional Government Office. His responsibilities included population health improvement, reducing inequalities, health protection and NHS emergency planning, mental health, children’s health and wellbeing and sustainable development. He led the health system’s response to pandemic flu in 2009/10, and developed an innovative model of integrated delivery of public health in the east of England. Paul also led the regional NHS programme to reduce healthcare associated infections, achieving a 60% reduction in cases of clostridium difficile across 14 acute hospitals in one year.

Paul has made several national contributions, co-authoring a report for the previous Secretary of State for Health on enabling effective delivery of health and wellbeing, and chairing the Department of Health’s Coalition for Better Health obesity workgroup with private and public sector organisations.

Paul is an experienced medical leader, and has published on leadership and management for doctors, as well as articles on quality, sustainability, inequalities and lifestyle risk factors. He is particularly interested in the characteristics and importance of high quality clinical and health protection teams.