Exploring Public Health in Wales with Claire Beynon: Insights from Cardiff & Vale's Exec DPH

In this episode of "Public Health Spotlight," host Mia Collett engages in a compelling conversation with Claire Beynon, the Executive Director of Public Health for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board. Claire shares her diverse and vibrant career journey, from working in various NHS roles, including cancer commissioning and public health consulting, to her current pivotal position.

Claire's passion for public health is evident as she talks about her commitment to teaching and mentoring the next generation of public health leaders, emphasising the importance of seizing varied career experiences and staying enthusiastic.

Gain valuable insights on managing public health initiatives, building strong partnerships, and the benefits of working within the Welsh public health system. Whether you're a public health professional, a student, or someone interested in community health, this episode is packed with wisdom and inspiration.

Tune in and discover how Claire Beynon balances her extensive roles and continues to drive impactful changes in public health.

Thank you for tuning in to Public Health Spotlight: A Panoramic Associates Podcast. For more expert discussions on public health, be sure to subscribe. Visit our website at panoramicassociates.co.uk to learn more about our work in the public health sector. This podcast is produced in collaboration with the Association of Directors of Public Health.

Transcript

mia collett [00:00:00]:
 Good afternoon, everyone. My name's Mia Collett from panoramic associates and I oversee the health and social care team. And welcome to today's episode of Public Health Spotlight. And today we are joined by Claire Beynon. Claire, if you could please start by introducing yourself.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:00:13]:
 Thank you. Yes, so, my name is Claire Beynon and I'm the executive director of public health for Cardiff and the Vail University health Board.
 
 mia collett [00:00:19]:
 Brilliant. Thank you. And can you start by giving a brief overview as to what your role is as an executive DPH at Cardenvale University Health Board?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:00:27]:
 Of course. So, the health board has two statutory responsibilities. One is to make sure that we break even, and the most important one is to make sure that we improve the health and wellbeing of our local population. And that's really what my job is all about.
 
 mia collett [00:00:40]:
 Can you please provide a brief history of your journey to becoming an executive DPH?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:00:44]:
 Of course, yes. So, immediately before I became the executive director of public health, I was actually the deputy here and my executive director really trained me very well and gave me lots of fabulous experiences, so I'm very grateful to her for supporting me in this journey. I worked for the policy and international health team in public health Wales, and before that I worked as a consultant in public health for Taf University Health Board. But before that, before I did my public health training, I worked for many years in the NHS, so I worked over in Bristol and I was a commissioner of services and I worked on all sorts of different projects, so cancer commissioning interventions not normally undertaken. All sorts of interesting experience in the NHS, and the way I got into that was through the gateway to leadership programme. So the gateway to leadership program took people from various different backgrounds, so there were people from the military, from the post office, from all different walks of life, and they brought people into the NHS at a senior level. And before I'd been working in local authority, so I'd worked in local authority for many years, working in their leisure services and cultural services, so I had lots of different experiences before I took on this role.
 
 mia collett [00:02:00]:
 A lovely, varied, colourful career. Thank you.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:02:03]:
 I think that's what's really. Sorry, I think that's what's really important about public health. You have people from so many different backgrounds and they've got so many different skills that you can mix those skills together and you get a really strong team.
 
 mia collett [00:02:15]:
 Yeah, definitely. Thank you. And you mentioned that you were deputy beforehand. How does your role compare now as executive DPH compared to when you were deputy?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:02:23]:
 Well, first thing I'd say is it's much busier, but I very much enjoy it. I say I'm busy, but I'm also very happy. It gives me the autonomy to work with the team on deciding what the priorities are, for example. So, since I've been director of public health, we've agreed on a vision for our team and also three priorities. So our vision is to reduce health inequalities and improve the health and wellbeing of our population. And our three priorities are around increasing vaccination rates, reducing levels of smoking, and increasing the number of people who are living with a healthy weight.
 
 mia collett [00:03:00]:
 And how are you getting along with those priorities and visions at the moment?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:03:04]:
 Really well, thank you. So we're six months in and we have a plan for each of those areas. So we've had been working really closely with lots of different partners to work up our joint plans. I always say in public health, we never do anything alone. We're a really tiny team, but we make sure that we reach out and work with lots of partners and we're trying to use a whole systems approach, for example, to tackle obesity. So we work very closely with third sector, we work really closely with our local authority colleagues and also lots of other partners as well. So recently we had an engagement event. We had 160 different people come along from 35 different organizations, and people are really keen to work with us.
 
 mia collett [00:03:49]:
 Thank you. And in part, your team structure, how is your team made up within public.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:03:53]:
 Yeah, sure. So I've just appointed a deputy, so I'll be glad when I get the deputy. Yeah. So that's great. And then we have four consultants. Three of those four work part time. Underneath those, we've got a layer of principal, public health specialists, and then a whole team of people. So we've got about 39 people in our team.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:04:16]:
 That includes the admin team, who are absolutely essential to making us all run, as well as our practitioners working at various different levels.
 
 mia collett [00:04:24]:
 Okay, and the next question is, how would you define what a university health board is and how does it compare to the NHS councils and public health Wales?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:04:32]:
 It is very different here in Wales, so public health is still in the domain of the NHS, rather than being set in local authorities, as is in England. So that means we sit right at the board, around the table. We're with the other executive directors, so director of planning, medical director of nursing, Etcetera, and we are very much part of the NHS. In England, there is a different structure, so the public health obviously sits within local authority and it can be variable as to whether the director of public health reports into the director of social services or direct to the chief ICSAC. I'm glad to say that all the directors of public health in Wales, and there are seven of us, and we cover 22 local authorities. Between us, we all report direct to our chief execs in the NHS. The NHS in Wales is integrated health boards. That means that the health Board is responsible for public health, primary care, secondary care, and in our case, tertiary care as well, and mental health, too.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:05:40]:
 So it covers the full gambit of all the NHS services under one umbrella, and the benefits of that are huge. So, you know, we can really work very closely with our partners in primary care, for example, to think about how we make that shift upstream or shift left, depending on how you phrase it, to make sure that we're bringing prevention onto the agenda.
 
 mia collett [00:06:00]:
 Yeah. Imagine the partnership is so, so strong and the benefits you've mentioned. So, thank you. So, as well as being a full time executive DPH, you're affiliated with many wider organizations, such as being an honorary lecturer at the Cardiff University, being affiliated with the faculty of Public Health. How do you manage your time?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:06:18]:
 That's a good question. You'd have to ask my family about how do I manage all of these different things. But I think if you ask somebody and they say, always ask the busy person to do something else, don't they? So I think that holds true. It's really important to manage time really carefully. You know, I look at my diary on a very careful basis and see what I can commit to, but I think it's really important to bring the next generation on as well. So that's why I'm really committed to teaching. So I teach both for the faculty of public health and for the local university, and I really enjoy those sessions. I find that I learn something from, you know, when I'm.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:06:56]:
 When I'm teaching as well as, you know, obviously, I'm imparting my knowledge about public health and I think if you have someone that's really enthusiastic about public health, it just brings it to life and makes it more exciting for the students. So I'm really keen to keep involved in that. And then the faculty in Wales is a really important organization for us. It's our sort of governing body as such, and it's run by the members, for the members, just like the ADPH is. So it's important that you give back as well. And I try to do that through my membership of the faculty and Wales committee.
 
 mia collett [00:07:30]:
 Yeah, it's very impressive and inspirational as well. So, yeah, well done. However, you're managing your time. Well done to that. And you mentioned that aspiring kind of cohort of public health leaders. What advice would you give the next generation of public health leaders as to why they should consider working in Wales?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:07:47]:
 Well, there's two parts to that question, really. So the first bit is about, you know, how can you prepare yourself for being a director of public health if that's what you'd like to do? And I can't say that I always thought, oh, I must be a director of public health. You know, I knew other people who felt that way and were very driven towards that, but it didn't come to me until much later in life.
 
 mia collett [00:08:05]:
 Okay.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:08:06]:
 When I'd had more experiences. And actually, I realized all of the bits of my work that I really enjoyed were all the public health pieces, and I hadn't really put that together until much later. So I think just do what you enjoy and enjoy it along the way. Make the most of every experience. If you can say yes and you've got capacity, say yes to all the different experiences because you learn so much from them. That would be my one piece of advice. And I think really being involved with the ADPH from early on sort of made me realize that I could do it and I was capable of doing it. So one of my previous directors of public health, when I worked in my first consultant role, signed me up as an associate member for.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:08:48]:
 For the ADPH. And that was a really inspirational and sort of trigger moment for me. So I came along to the faculty meetings, sorry, the association of directors of public health meetings, and really grew in my confidence. I became an associate member and then I became the associate representative on the ADPH council. And that gave me exposure to other directors of public health across the whole of the UK. And I learned so much just from even listening to those sessions and obviously gave the welsh view on things as well. Which leads me to the second part of your question around why Wales? So I've partly answered it in terms of the Wales is amazing because it's got an integrated health board system and we cover a lot of the ground under one organization, so that has real positives and real benefits. And I think the policy environment in Wales is absolutely fabulous.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:09:46]:
 So we've got things like the Wellbeing of Future Generations act, which is really groundbreaking policy that we have here in Wales. And I think it's just a great place to work. You know, if we are thinking long term, we're thinking about prevention, Wales is the place to do it.
 
 mia collett [00:10:02]:
 Brilliant. Thank you very much. And on that note, what is one skill you wish you would have developed or one thing you would have known before becoming an executive director of public health?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:10:11]:
 If you can answer, that's really tricky. I'm not sure. There's just one thing I think sort of, for me, it was like collecting pebbles, you know, collecting little bits and pieces as I went through my career. So I had so many different jobs before I came into public health, and quite a lot of them involved bits of public health. And I didn't really call it that or know it was that at the time. But, you know, reflecting back, those were the things that I enjoyed.
 
 mia collett [00:10:35]:
 Yeah.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:10:36]:
 So I always say to my kids, do what you enjoy.
 
 mia collett [00:10:39]:
 Yeah, yeah. That's a great piece of advice. And what would you say the future priorities are for Cardiff and bail?
 
 Claire Beynon [00:10:45]:
 Okay. So we've really set out three priorities for our organization in terms of prevention. So one's around reducing levels of smoking. So we're really going to try and get on top of that because we know that levels of smoking are not equally spread across our population. People who live in more deprived areas are more likely to smoke. If you're exposed to smoke as a young child and you see people smoking, you have those role models, you're much more likely to smoke. So we need to reduce those health inequalities. And the other two areas are increasing levels of people who are living with a healthy weight.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:11:21]:
 We know we have a really obesogenic environment across the whole of the UK. If you walk down the street, you'll see lots of advertising for high fat sugar salt products. If you are walking down the street, you might now see, for example, more cycle lanes. I saw a child just a moment ago pedaling along in the cycle lane, and I. It made my heart sing to see it. Obviously, that child going home from school. So that's really important to us, that we change the environment. We all struggle with, you know, keeping a healthy weight because we're battling against all these triggers for high fat sugar, salt foods and, you know, reducing our levels of activity on a daily basis, whether it's just easier to take the car than it is to walk or, you know, we have to think about things a little more to.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:12:07]:
 To plan our journey. So we need to be aware of that. And then finally, we need to increase vaccination rates. Again, we see differentials in terms of our vaccination rates across our population. So people from more deprived areas or people from different ethnic groups might struggle to access services. So we need to be reaching out to them, making sure that we're making it as absolutely as easy as possible. We're communicating in the way that they want to be communicated to. We've got things in different languages.
 
 Claire Beynon [00:12:36]:
 We've got, you know, more accessible services. So we're having a big drive on that at the moment.
 
 mia collett [00:12:42]:
 That's really impressive. And thank you, Claire. I'm sure our listeners would have gained a lot of insights from your thoughts. So thank you very much for everyone for listening today.