As of November 2011, Roger French will be transferring the role of NHS Forest ambassador over to Ed Macalister-Smith. We are incredibly grateful to Roger for all his hard work and enthusiasm both in encouraging sites to be part of the NHS Forest and for his input into the steering group since the project began.
Ed will chair the steering group and encourage more sites, particularly in southeast and south central England, to join the NHS Forest. Ed has been CEO in the NHS for the past 11 years at Primary Care Trust and trust level. Ed studied environmental sciences at Wye College, University of London, followed by an MSc in Forestry from Oxford.
After a period working in the voluntary sector, he became involved with the NHS as chair of a local contracted voluntary organisation, at board level in a health authority and then in a community health council, before joining a family health services authority.
Ed has been involved in several strategic rebuilds of NHS premises, and is wholly supportive of the NHS Forest programme as a way a creating patient-supportive environments, staff-friendly workplaces, and potentially significant responses to the NHS’s enormous carbon footprint. He is happy to support the fantastic level of energy and creativity already evident in the NHS Forest community, and in taking that energy to new parts of the NHS.