Professor Dame Carol Black DBE, FRCP, FMedSci is Principal of Newnham College Cambridge and Expert Adviser on Health and Work to NHS England and Public Health England. She chairs the board of Think Ahead, the Government’s fast-stream training programme for Mental Health Social Workers; the Board of Nuffield Health and Corporate Services Ltd; and the Institute of Cardiovascular Medicine and Science. She is a member of the Bevan Commission on health in Wales, the board of UK Active, Rand Europe’s Council of Advisers, the Strategy Board for the Defence National Rehabilitation Centre, and the Advisory Board of Step up to Serve.
As Principal of Newnham Dame Carol is on several committees in Cambridge University, for example the Equality and Diversity Committee, the Advisory Board of the Centre for Science and Public Policy, and the Health and Wellbeing Working Group, and she chairs the Colleges Committee’s Working Group on Bursaries for Home and EU undergraduates. She is a Deputy Vice-Chancellor, patron of the Women’s Leadership Centre in the Judge Business School, and a member of the University’s Leadership Network.
Dame Carol has compiled three independent reviews for the UK Government. As National Director for Health and Work (2006-11) she completed in 2008 a review of the health of the population of working age, which led to a revised medical certificate of sickness; and in November 2011 she completed as Co-Chair an independent review of sickness absence in Britain whose recommendations have mostly been put in place. Her latest independent review, of employment outcomes of addiction to drugs or alcohol, or obesity, and the benefits system, was published in December 2016 and is gradually being implemented.
Professor Black is a past-President of the Royal College of Physicians, of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, and of the British Lung Foundation, and past-Chair of the Nuffield Trust for health policy. The Centre she established at the Royal Free Hospital in London is internationally renowned for research and treatment of connective tissue diseases such as scleroderma. She is a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery.
