Andrew Craig
Andrew Craig, born in the USA and educated in Scotland, has been a consultant for over 25 years specialising in areas such as food and health, physical activity, long term neurological conditions and user and public involvement in public services particularly the NHS.
GRASS ROOTS ACTIVISM
He was a member for ten years of the Balham Park Surgery Patients Liaison Group in Wandsworth and devised the group’s winning application for the 2002 Patient Participation Award from the Royal College of General Practitioners.
PRIMARY CARE LAY EXPERT
He has extensive NHS experience in primary care settings gained through membership of London Health Authorities, Primary Care Groups and PCTs since 1988. From 2002 to 2011 he was the Lay Member on the Professional Executive Committee (PEC) of Wandsworth Primary Care Trust, leading on patient and public involvement and also for obesity.
He has extensive specification and procurement experience, most recently as the the lay member on Wandsworth’s 111/Out of Hours procurement, then serving until 2013 on the local NHS 111 Clinical Governance Committee.
UNDERSTANDING OF COMPLAINTS
He was a complaints convener for various London NHS Health Authorities, Trusts and PCTs from 1996 to 2004 and active in the London Primary Care Complaints Consortium. He was involved in mental health issues in South West London and chaired the Mental Health Hospital Managers from 1989-1995 at Springfield Hospital (part of South West London and St George’s Mental Health Trust) in Tooting.
MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE
His management experience includes six years as Head of Education and Training with the British Epilepsy Association and 14 years as a senior manager with the Royal College of Nursing before leaving in 1996 to pursue full-time consultancy. From 1996 to 2000 he was a consultant for the Sports Council’s national governing body Exercise England combining the roles of Chief Executive and Registrar. As a result of this, he led the project team for the Department of Health’s National Quality Assurance Framework for Exercise Referral Systems (DoH, 2001).
ANDREW AT M-A-C
Andrew has led many projects for the Partnership – with Christine Hogg he co-wrote the NHS Wales guidance on complaint handling and prepared much of the training material for that project. He was a member of the M-A-C team in the First Wave Foundation Trust projects where he has developed the “beliefs and values” prioritisation tool for Governors to use. He led MAC’s development of the year of care commissioning tool for the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
As an avid publicist for user and public involvement in health care, in 2010 he produced a series of five articles for Primary Health Care on user engagement in primary care. He co-edits with David Gilbert the Smart Guides to Engagement series for the Department of Health and NHS Networks and authored the guide on Engagement for Commissioning Success.
ACADEMIC DISTINCTIONS
From an academic (First Class MA Hons, St Andrews, 1971) and research background (Carnegie Scholarship, PhD, Edinburgh, 1980), he gained professional qualifications as a further education teacher (University of London, PGCE Technical, 1977) and in health education (London South Bank University, DipHealthEducation, 1982). He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
