Nigel Crisp, Baron Crisp

Edmund Nigel Ramsay Crisp, Baron Crisp KCB ( born January 14, 1952), is a former senior official in the Department of Health and managers in the National Health Service. After his retirement, he was raised to life peer. He sits as a cross Bencher in the upper house. He particularly focuses on international health policy and development.

Personal

Crisp studied philosophy at Cambridge.

He is married and has two children and lives near Newbury. He is interested in the country life, gardening and painting.

Career

Crisp joined in 1986, the National Health Service (NHS ), after he had previously worked in Liverpool and Cambridgeshire in the municipal sector. From 1981 to 1986 he was director of Age Concern in Cambridge. He then worked for the learning disabled in East Berkshire. In 1988 he took a leading position, and later became manager of the Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals. At Oxford in 1993 he became managing director of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals, one of the largest university hospitals in the country. In 1997 he was Regional Director of the NHS for the area "South Thames " and 1999 London Regional Director.

Crisp was appointed on 1 November 2000 as Managing Director and Secretary of the NHS. On 8 March 2006, he announced that he would end the month resign his office because he could not longer bear the financial problems of the NHS. He was praised by the Prime Minister Tony Blair for his commitment to the British health care system. On 28 April 2006, he was elevated to Baron Crisp. His successor, the NHS was Sir Ian Carruthers as managing director and Hugh Taylor as Secretary of State.

International Health and Development

Nigel Crisp has been very active since 2006 in international health and development; Most notable is his publication from 2007 Global Health Partnerships, a report for the Prime Minister about the possibilities of the UK to support health development in developing countries; together with the Commissioner of the African Union Bience Gawanas a task force was established to promote the training of health workers. The result was the publication in 2008 Scaling up, Saving lives and in 2009 together with the Zambian Minister of Health, the study Zambia UK Health Workforce Alliance. He regularly publishes and lectures on international health and published his book Turning the world upside down - the search for global health.

He is Chairman of Sightsavers International, Senior Fellow of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, guest of honor of the Harvard School of Public Health and Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Honors

In 2003 he was awarded the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath conferred.

Publications

• Turning the world upside down - the search for global health in the 21st Century, Hodder Education, 2010