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ABOUT NIGEL LIGHTFOOT

Professor NIGEL LIGHTFOOT CBE, MBBS, FRCPath, MSc, FFPH                   

Professor Nigel Lightfoot CBE has a long and distinguished career in public health and global health security. He is a High-Level Advisor to EC DEVCO and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the International Science and Technology Centre in Kazakhstan. He is a Consultant for NATO working on mobile CBRN laboratories for Moldova, Tunisia and Morocco. He has been an Independent Medical Adviser to Yorkshire Water Services since 1995 and the Independent Medical Advisor to Amazon on COVID-19 since February 2020.

CAREER

Training originally as a consultant medical microbiologist, Nigel served for twelve years in the Royal Navy including nuclear submarines. He was a Director in the Public Health Laboratory Service from 1982-2002 and following the 9/11 attacks in the United States he was appointed to the Department of Health as Head of CBRN Training and Scenario Development. He developed cutting edge multi-agency exercises for CBRN preparedness, and as Director of Emergency Response he set up the Emergency Response Division of the Health Protection Agency from its inception in 2003 until 2010. He was also a non-executive Director of the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research, Porton Down, from 1994 to 2003.

Dr Lightfoot was until 2010 the Director for Emergency Response at the Health Protection Agency, leading on pandemic influenza, emerging health threats, CBRN response strategies and international relations in G7 for these areas. He has provided expert advisory work as consultant to the Department of Health, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. He was Executive Director of Connecting Organisations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS) 2012 -2016 and led six networks of 28 low to middle income countries in building capacity, developing one health and innovative operational research programmes for the surveillance of infectious diseases. He successfully built a West African Network in the wake of the Ebola crisis.

Dr Lightfoot has enormous experience in public health and crisis management; He was responsible for the Health protection Agency pandemic influenza planning and response and led the public health response during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. He was a member of the government crisis committee, COBR for many years and led on pandemic and avian influenza outbreaks, flooding and the public health investigation into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium 210 in London.

He has extensive experience in risk management and risk communication, interventions in outbreaks and is able to make risk impact decisions quickly and soundly to protect the public. He is recognised for his strategic thinking and for his ability to bring meetings to effective outcomes.

Dr Lightfoot was appointed a Commander of the British Empire for services to public health in the 2009 New Year’s Honours List.