Professor Dr Durka Dougall
About Durka ...
Durka is an influential BAME health and care leader in UK with over 25 years experience. Not only is she the founder and CEO of the Centre for Population Health, but she is also the Acting Deputy Chair for two NHS Trusts, the Chair of The Health Creation Alliance, a Professor of Population Health and Public Health supporting University College London and University of East London, and a leadership development expert supporting clinical, board and system development across UK and internationally.
Durka started her professional career as a surgical doctor. Through her clinical practice, she increasingly saw the need for a change in the approach of the health and care system in England. She found herself caring for people in hospitals who could have been supported better in the community. She saw that people with the greatest need for timely quality support were often the ones who also found it the hardest to access this. She saw a need for organisations to join forces to provide even better health and care support. More than anything she saw the tremendous power of people (patients, families, staff and communities) to help lead the creation of a healthier future. But they weren't often the ones in charge of this. And she wanted to help do something about this. So, to start to help turn this around, Durka began to dual train in leadership and organisational development, and then to support people to lead improvements in practice. The more she did this, the more she realised what was possible just by using the right approach to support and enable people to unlock their potential as leaders for a healthier and more equal future.
For the last 10 years, Durka has been leading efforts to develop leadership capability across UK and more globally across a variety of roles . She has supported many individuals, organisations and systems to progress their efforts for population health and tackling health inequalities and is proud to be recognised as a trusted leader in this space.
Durka is proud of her Sri-Lankan heritage and of being a working mother to two teenage children.
