Claire Laurent

Public Health

I am a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health (FFPH) and a defined public health specialist with UKPHR. I have 15 years' experience in various public health roles, including communications, health equity, mental health, suicide prevention and screening. I have a Master's in Public Health and a postgraduate certificate in health screening. I am currently working as a Public Health Consultant in a local authority, where my portfolio includes health inequalities, mental health and suicide prevention, healthy places and whole systems obesity.

Explaining how health inequalities impact on people's health can be complex. Working recently with an NIHR research mobilisation expert I have changed the way we frame what we say about the Wider Determinants of Health in a local authority in order to get our messages across. Framing, as described by the Health Foundation and the Frameworks Institute gives us a new and clear way of explaining the impact of health.

Health inequalities worsened during the pandemic, to an extent that the wider public began to recognise how inequality impacted people's health. I wrote a series of reports for the Local Government Association on the impact of Covid on health inequalities. This included special reports on Covid and its impact on poverty, on older people, on black and ethnic minority communities and its impact on mental health.

As part of Public Health England, I designed and led PHE's National Conversation on Health Inequalities, a public engagement programme that focused on understanding the public perspective and lived experience of inequalities. Work that influenced the subsequent language and approach to reducing health inequalities.

In collaboration with colleagues from the University of Sheffield I explored a public health approach to tackling modern slavery and published a rapid evidence assessment in Public Health.

I offer public health expertise, devising strategies, advising, developing and leading work programmes, writing and editing briefings and reports, planning and managing communications. If you would like to commission me, please get in touch.