About the PMHIC
The College established a Public Mental Health Implementation Centre (PMHIC) with an aim to support improved implementation of evidence-based interventions to treat mental disorders, prevent associated impacts, prevent mental disorders and promote mental wellbeing and resilience.
The work of the PMHIC will lead to the sustainable and equitable reduction of the impacts of mental disorders and the promotion of population mental wellbeing locally, nationally and internationally.
The Centre was launched officially in March 2022 at the Houses of Parliament and is being hosted by RCPsych's National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health.
The work of the PMHIC is guided by a range of experts from across public health and mental health including clinicians, academics, researchers and experts by experience.
PMHIC team
Joint Clinical and Strategic Director of the PMHIC, Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist, East London NHS Foundation Trust
Peter is consultant liaison psychiatrist at the Royal London Hospital, and lead consultant for general hospital psychiatry across four east London general hospitals. He graduated from University College Dublin in 1988 and completed all his medical and psychiatric training in Ireland before his first NHS consultant appointment in 1999.
He has worked directly with the Gastroenterology Department of Barts Health since 2016: he provides three outpatient clinics each week, ward consultations as well as collaborative teaching and research activities. A former Director of Public Education for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, RCPsych, he was awarded the Public Educator of the Year Award by the College in 2012; he was Associate Registrar for public mental health 2014-21, when he became co-director of the RCPsych Public Mental Health Implementation Centre. He has written two textbooks Clinical Cases Uncovered (2009) and with Alan Rosen, Early Intervention in Psychiatry in 2016.
Joint Clinical and Strategic Director of the PMHIC, Director for Public Mental Health and Consultant Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
As well as his College role, Jonathan is Director for Public Mental Health and Consultant Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation, Chair of the Public Mental Health Working Group at the World Psychiatric Association, Public Mental Health Advisor to WHO Europe and Honorary Professor of Public Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is involved in the development and implementation of local, national and international public mental health strategy.
Director, National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH)
Director at the NCCMH, providing operational leadership. Tom previously set up and managed mental health services at Sheffield Health and Social Care Foundation Trust and continues to lead the development of complex mental health and wellbeing projects, including the mental health care pathways for NHS England and the Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme for NHS Improvement.
He provides operational and strategic support in the running of all the NCCMH’s commissioned projects and works closely with funding organisations to establish and maintain excellent relationships.
Senior Editor, NCCMH
As Senior Editor, Nuala works closely with NCCMH and PMHIC researchers and authors, editing documents and web pages, and overseeing the editorial process from draft to publication. She has been with the NCCMH since 2009, working on the editorial development of NICE clinical guidelines on mental health up to 2016. She was Chair of the RCPsych Staff Representative Committee from 2018–20.
Nuala specialises in medical, social science and academic editorial work, having previously worked for Routledge, Pluto Press, Harcourt Brace and the British Institute of Radiology. She is Features Editor at Raw Vision, an award-winning art magazine founded in 1989, and a contributor to the art magazine brutjournal.
Research Fellow
Eliazar Luna is a Research Fellow at the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at UCL and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH).
Eliazar recently completed a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL. His research focused on social determinants of depression and the association between depression and mortality. He is also a guest lecturer in quantitative methods at the University of Chile.
Prior to his PhD research, Eliazar completed an MSc in Social Epidemiology at UCL awarded with Distinction and worked in the public sector, specifically in social services and primary healthcare in highly deprived contexts in Chile.
Senior Researcher
Vas Papageorgiou is a Senior Researcher in the Public Mental Health Implementation Centre. Vas recently completed a PhD in Public Health at Imperial College London. Her research explored the impact of social and structural determinants on the health and well-being of people living with HIV in the UK, including experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vas has a BSc in Medical Genetics (University of Leicester) and an MPH (Imperial College London) awarded with Distinction. Vas has experience working in academia and the charity sector. She was previously a Research Assistant in the NIHR Imperial BRC Patient Experience Research Centre and also worked in the patient and public involvement team at Cancer Research UK.
Academic and Strategic Director, NCCMH
Academic Director of the NCCMH, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Clinical Effectiveness at University College London, and a psychologist and academic with an international reputation in the practical application of research to clinical practice, Steve is ideally placed to ensure that this research is methodologically rigorous.
Steve has expertise in the development and evaluation of psychological interventions and has led high-profile evaluations of mental health services and complex interventions (street triage, IAPT services for long-term conditions). In addition, he has co-authored competence frameworks and curricula that underpin most training programmes for IAPT, and overseen work commissioned by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust.
Project Manager, NCCMH
Joanna is a qualified Project Manager at the NCCMH with an MSc in Comparative European Social Policy. She is responsible for coordinating the development of a wide range of mental health initiatives, including competence frameworks, research-based evidence reviews, and mental health education and training programme evaluations.
Joanna has many years of experience working as part of project and policy development teams within central government departments and agencies, including the Ministry of Justice, Department for Environment and Rural Affairs and Ofsted.
Most recently, Joanna project-managed numerous initiatives commissioned by organisations including Health Education England, the Social Mobility Commission, UCL Partners and The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Her work involves working collaboratively with stakeholders including clinicians, researchers and people with lived experience, to advance patient outcomes through the implementation of service improvements and coordination of evaluation and assessment activities.
Senior Researcher, NCCMH
Dr Jean Strelitz is Senior Researcher at the Public Mental Health Implementation Centre and leads the research programme. Jean has a PhD and MSPH in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Prior to joining the RCPsych, Jean was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge MRC Epidemiology Unit where her research focused on the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases and improving long-term health outcomes for people with diabetes.
Jean holds an honorary researcher role at the UCL Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology.
Head of Quality and Research Development, NCCMH
Head of Director for Quality and Research Development. Clare oversees and contributes to the quality of all NCCMH's outputs, including implementation guidance, competence frameworks, manuals and systematic reviews.
As an editor and writer in the field of mental health for 15 years and senior editor for the NCCMH's clinical guidelines programme for NICE, Clare’s responsibility will be to lead the team drafting the final product for this project.
PMHIC Advisory Board
The work of the PMHIC is overseen by an advisory board, who meet quarterly. They are:
- Dr Ed Beveridge, Consultant Psychiatrist, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
- Professor Kamaldeep Bhui CBE MD FRCPsych FRCP(E) FRSA PFHEA, Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford
- Dr Jed Boardman PhD FRCPsych, Consultant Psychiatrist/Senior Lecturer in Social Psychiatry, Senior Policy Advisor, Centre for Mental Health, London
- Professor Kevin Fenton, President of the Faculty of Public Health
- Professor Dame Clare Gerada, President of the Royal College of General Practitioners
- Professor Zafar Iqbal, Associate Medical Director in Public Health, Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- Professor Ann John, Population Data Science, Medical School, Swansea University
- Abiola Johnson, Expert by Experience
- Professor Peter Jones FRCPsych FMedSci, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Director, NIHR Applied Research Collaboration, East of England, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, CPFT
- Professor James Kirkbride, Professor of Psychiatric and Social Epidemiology, Division of Psychiatry, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London
- Dr Elaine Lockhart, Chair of the Child and Adolescent Faculty, Royal College of Psychiatrists
- Dr Sarah Markham, Expert by Experience
- Professor Sir Michael Marmot FBA, FMedSci, FRCP, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London
- Liam Hughes, Chair of Public Mental Health Special Interest Group, Faculty of Public Health
- Professor Jim McManus, National Director of Health and Wellbeing, Public Health Wales
- Dr Ciaran Mulholland, Consultant Psychiatrist with the Northern Health and Social Care Trust and a Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Professor Maggie Rae, former President of the Faculty of Public Health
- Dr Colm Owens, Medical Director, NHS Devon Mental Health, Learning Disability and Neurodiversity Collaborative
- Mark Rowland, Chief Executive, Mental Health Foundation
- George Roycroft, Head of Policy and Campaigns, Strategic Communications, Royal College of Psychiatrists
- Janet Seale, Expert by Experience
- Dr Trudi Seneviratne, Registrar, Royal College of Psychiatrists
- Dr Jude Stansfield, Principal Research Fellow, Leeds Beckett University
- Dr Peter Trimble, Psychiatrist, Belfast City University, Chair of the Neuropsychiatry Special Interest Group, Royal College of Psychiatrists Northern Ireland
- Karen Turner, Lay Trustee, Royal College of Psychiatrists