New Director of Public Health outlines priorities

Blackburn with Darwen’s new Director of Public Health is looking forward to working with local communities and partners to address health inequalities and enhance residents’ quality of life.

Abdul Razaq joined Blackburn with Darwen Council last week, bringing with him three decades of public health experience.

Abdul, who was born and raised in Rochdale where he still lives, has worked as a Director of Public Health for both Trafford and Suffolk. He was the lead Director of Public Health working to set up the Food Active brand, Give Up Loving Pop education programme for families, and the local government declaration on healthy weight.

More recently, Abdul has worked as Deputy Director of Public Health for Lancashire, playing a key part in the county’s response to the Covid pandemic. During his time at Lancashire County Council, Abdul also led on public health transformation, data and intelligence, Covid community testing and vaccination, and ethnic minority health inequalities.

Abdul has a wealth of experience in tackling health inequalities amongst vulnerable population groups across the North West, and has extensive networks, including working with the Faculty of Public Health Special Interest Group on Pakistan. Abdul is also involved in two charities promoting tackling blindness amongst the poorest in the world, and N2N Health Partnership which aims to strengthen global health systems resilience.

Looking to the future, Abdul Razaq commented:

Having worked with colleagues in Blackburn with Darwen earlier in my career in the North West, it’s a borough I know well and have links to.

As the borough transitions from the acute phase of the pandemic, I am looking forward to working with our local communities and partner organisations to make strides in re-energising our health inequalities work.

I’m a keen advocate of building capacity and assets within our communities that can help to enhance the quality of life for residents.

Leading the Council’s experienced Public Health team, Abdul’s four initial priority themes are:

• SAFE – supporting residents to live safely with COVID
• RECOVER – ensuring that public health services and programmes recover and catch up from the pandemic
• PREVENTION – strengthening asset-based prevention activities with our wider community, voluntary and faith sector, care services, NHS, education and college anchor institutions
• COLLABORATION – exploring system-wide opportunities for improving the quality of residents’ lives

Denise Park, Chief Executive of Blackburn with Darwen Council, said:

Abdul Razaq’s high calibre track record and his interest in global support for public health development and health inequalities closer to home made him the ideal choice for our new Director of Public Health.

I and my senior leadership team look forward to working with him and welcome Abdul to Blackburn with Darwen.

Abdul replaces Prof Dominic Harrison who retired from the role of Director of Public Health for Blackburn with Darwen at the end of March.