Role and responsibilities
As Director of Public Health, Steve has responsibility for connecting and working with organisations to improve health, reduce unfair and avoidable differences in health and tackle the preventable causes of illness and disease.
Steve’s responsibilities also include:
- leading the local response to infectious disease and other harming hazards in collaboration with a wide range of partners
- commissioning services that improve people’s health and wellbeing, including sexual health, smoking cessation, early years and substance misuse services
- collating, interpreting and providing information and data about the resident’s health and wellbeing to key partners through the production of the Devon Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and the Devon Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy
As part of Steve’s wider directorate responsibilities, he also oversees the Heart of the South West Trading Standards Service and Communities Team. This responsibility includes the Devon library service, youth service, asylum and resettlement, community safety and domestic violence and sexual abuse.
Biography
Steve was appointed as Director of Public Health and Communities for Devon County Council in January 2021.
After completing his first degree in Sports Science and Leisure Steve started his career in Public Health working for the NHS in Devon in 1995.
Steve completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Health Promotion and went on to undertake a master’s degree in Public Health at the University of the West of England. Steve remained working in the NHS, undertaking various senior public health roles including Acting and Interim Director of Public Health for South Hams and West Devon Primary Care Trust and Assistant Director for Devon Primary Care Trust. He joined the UK Public Health Register in 2006 and became a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health in the same year.
As a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 Steve transferred to Devon County Council on 1 April 2013 as Assistant Director of Public Health, becoming Deputy Director of Public Health in 2016.
Steve then completed an 18-month secondment to Cornwall Council and the Council of the Isles of Scilly as the Service Director of Wellbeing and Public Health until he returned to Devon in April 2020 and taking up his current position in January 2021.
Steve’s ambition is to increase the efforts of all partners adopt a health in all policies approach, focusing on the building blocks of health, addressing the current inequity of access to health and care services and investing more in prevention.
Away from work, his two sons keep him very active, mountain biking, walking, swimming and playing golf.