Maria Kane OBE to continue as Bristol Health Partners Chair until 2025

We are delighted to announce that North Bristol NHS Trust Chief Executive Maria Kane OBE has been appointed as the substantive Chair of Bristol Health Partners Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) until 2025.

The Bristol Health Partners Board made the decision to confirm Maria’s position as substantive Chair following a meeting on 11 October 2022. She had been interim Chair since April, when Robert Woolley retired from his post of Chief Executive at University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust.

At her first Bristol Health Partners’ conference as Chair in October, Maria addressed more than 100 researchers, health and care professionals and public contributors from across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG).

She highlighted recent progress made by our Health Integration Teams, from developing community research which led to relocation of a clinic to improve continence care for Somali women, to implementing an evidence-based exercise programme to reduce frailty in two BNSSG locality partnerships.

Maria said:

“I’m so pleased to have the opportunity to continue as Bristol Health Partners Chair for the next three years, to help carry on the fantastic work that the partnership started some ten years ago. System-wide working, which draws on the best available evidence, will ultimately achieve better health and care outcomes, and reduce health inequalities, for people in our region and I look forward to building on the progress we are making in this area.”

Bristol Health Partners AHSC Director, Professor David Wynick, added:

“This is wonderful news. I speak on behalf of all the organisations involved in Bristol Health Partners in being delighted to continue working with Maria for the partnership’s ongoing development.”

About Maria Kane

Maria has been Chief Executive of North Bristol NHS Trust since April 2021. Before this, she held the role of Chief Executive of North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust, and previously worked as Chief Executive of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust between 2007 and 2017, and as Executive Director at North West London Strategic Health Authority between 2002 and 2006. Maria has held a variety of senior roles in corporate and strategic development for the Royal College of Midwives, the Medical Protection Society and the National Council of Voluntary Organisations.

In 2019, Maria was made an OBE for services to health care leadership over two decades. She has previously been a trustee of Open Mind, Umbrella Mental Health, and Young Minds, as well as an adviser to the Lullaby Trust and a special adviser to the Care Quality Commission.