Biography
Honorary Member of the ACPGBI, since 2021. Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. Specialist in the history of medicine and disease in the ancient world. I was first diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in 1970 at the age of 19 and in 1976, I suffered a serious relapse and subsequently came under the care at Birmingham General Hospital, where I had performed the first of many laparotomies and resections and in 1982, gave me my ileostomy. My contribution as a patient representative started eighteen years ago when I was invited to be a trustee of the Bowel Disease Research Foundation and for its last six years, I was the Secretary. I was on the team that negotiated the merger with B&CR and was Foundation Secretary of Bowel Research UK. I am one of the founders of the Patient Liaison Group of the ACPGBI and four years ago, I succeed Jo Church as Chairman. This has brought me into the mainstream of the work of the ACPGBI, sitting on its Council and External Affairs Committee and on several sub-committees and more recently, the Diversity and Equality Working Group. I am member of the NHS Digital National GI Cancer Audit Project Board and the National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBOCA) Clinical Advisory Group and Chairman of the NBOCA Patient and Carer Panel. I am a PPI Adviser/co-applicant (and co-author) to many research projects in the field of colorectal surgery, especially IBD and bowel cancer, many published in Colorectal Disease, of which journal I am a member of the Editorial Advisory Board.