Patient Advocacy Panel
Revisit the talks and Q&A using the link above, and/or check out the video and bios below.
About the Panelists
Faye Bruce
Twitter: @FayeBruce17
Faye has a portfolio that is largely centred around expertise in and passion to address health disparities in the Black Caribbean and African community. She is a clinician, and an academic leading on programmes in health at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Faye is the Chair of the Caribbean & African Health Network (CAHN) a National organisation which was formed in 2017 which has an ambition to eradicate health disparities within a generation for Black people and works at both the strategic and operational level to effect that change. The organisation provides support to Black people including advocacy services, counselling, and other
Faye is the Co-Chair for the Greater Manchester and Eastern Cheshire Ethnic Black and Asian Maternity Workstream and sits on the Race and Health Observatory Maternity Stakeholder. She is sits on the Northern Care Alliance Board as a Non-Executive Director and also a community representation for Manchester Cathedral
Faye has been appointed as a Member of Greater Manchester Mayor’s Race Panel. She is involved in several pieces of research which include the role of Co-Investigator in nursing and racism at Sheffield Hallam University and also maternity research with RCOG and THIS Institute (Cambridge University) on maternity related developments to reduce risk in maternity service. Faye was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant Greater Manchester in 2021
Lisa Agyen
Twitter: @AKA_LeeA
Lisa Agyen has been living with Long Covid since infection in March 2020. After repeated poor experiences gaining access to support and care for the condition she became active in the Long Covid Support Group in Autumn 2020. This involved co-authoring an article in the Lancet, joining the NHS Long Covid Taskforce meetings as a patient representative and producing a survey to record the experience and ability to access Long Covid Clinics. Currently a Programme Manager in the Civil Service, she has worked on various government Programmes over the past 20 years and prides herself on being the kind of person that 'makes things happen'. Lisa is of Ghanaian heritage and lives in South London with her husband and three sons who are all football crazy.
Shilpa Venkatachalam, PhD MPH
Twitter: @ghlforg
Shilpa Venkatachalam, PhD, MPH, is Associate Director, Patient-Centered Research, at the Global Healthy Living Foundation (GHLF), CreakyJoints® and Co- Principal Investigator (PI) of ArthritisPower® Patient-Powered Research Network. She is a rheumatoid arthritis patient who has been living with the disease for four years. Dr. Venkatachalam completed her undergraduate degree in Mumbai, before moving to the U.K. to complete a master’s degree in literature at the University of Durham, and earned her PhD in critical theory at the University of Nottingham, U.K. Following significant life events that required navigating health systems as patient and a caregiver, she earned an advanced master’s degree in global health from New York University (NYU), during which she also won the prestigious Paul Ambrose Scholars Program fellowship awarded by the by the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. She was among 25 chosen by The Young Persons Chronic Disease Network in collaboration with American Cancer Society and the Harvard Global Equity Center for The Global Cancer Advocacy Training. In addition, she has been a regular panelist on global health topics from the Ambassador’s Club at the United Nations. She has international experience in health care, and has worked in India and in Chad in both private sectors and public sectors on chronic disease-related projects.
Syreeta Nolan
Twitter: @nolan_syreeta
Syreeta serves as co-feounder of Disabled in Higher Education on Twitter, Board member of HealthAdvocateX and is the founder of JADE (Justice, Advocacy and Disability Education) as a holistic disabled justice platform focused on empowering disabled students, faculty, staff and alumni through community and support. She will soon graduate with her Bachelor’s in Human Health Psychology from the University of California San Diego. Her lived experience as a Black, Indigenous, bisexual, Disabled woman have informed her advocacy goals along with her career goals. She hopes to continue to obtain a PhD in Health Policy or Prevention Science toward her goal to transform the mental health field through comprehensive preventive systems similar to what we have in our physical health system.