Ruth has worked as Public Health Lead for Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust for a number of years developing the ambulance service’s emerging role in intelligence-led early intervention and prevention at both a regional and national level. This work has involved developing Trust strategy as well as the national direction for the ambulance sector and chairing the national Public Health Leads Group to support local implementation of the public health agenda.

Most recently Ruth has been seconded to the regional Public Health England team for Yorkshire & Humber working on embedding a public health approach across the region’s emergency services as well as looking more broadly at the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health inequalities and how the NHS and other organisations can utilise community-centred, whole systems approaches to tackle the wider determinants of health & wellbeing.

Ruth is co-author of ‘Developing a Public Health Approach within the Ambulance Service’, a jointly published paper from AACE and PHE discussing what is meant by a pubic health approach within the context of the ambulance service and how this can be progressed by staff at all levels throughout ambulance trusts and collaboratively across systems.