Our team | Together4Health

Simon Williams

“Many organisations, whether large multi-nationals or smaller social enterprises, have gaps in their communication resources, either through staff moving on to other roles, or because financial constraints mean it is difficult to justify a full time appointment. The Together4Health concept provides affordable access to skilled consultants who can fill a gap for a specified period of time, or carry out a project with the requisite experience and knowledge.”

Simon has contact with an extensive network of decision-makers across the healthcare industry, including senior civil servants, politicians, leading patient advocacy groups and the commercial sector. Simon has organised successful campaigns on local and national issues from cleaner hospitals, counterfeit medicines to patient rights and safer medical devices.

Simon is founder and Director of Expect Health, which is a social enterprise that promotes quality of living for people affected by long term illness and was on the board of directors of The Patient Information Forum.

He is an Editorial Board Member for The British Journal of Healthcare Management and edited the supplement on Long Term Conditions.

Gillian Gibbons

“Together4Health specialises in working with healthcare organisations to find individual and flexible communications solutions.”

Gillian has more than two decades’ experience in PR and communications. A solid grounding gained in-house at major blue-chip companies, including nine years at Standard Life Healthcare and six years at financial services organisations GE Capital and Lloyds TSB, has equipped Gillian with expertise in a range of areas such as media management, integrated communication programmes and high level public affairs.

Six years ago, she founded Wychwood Communications and during this period Gillian has continued to build on her healthcare background with assignments ranging from patient and practitioner engagement programmes for West Kent PCT and BUPA Health Dialog to implementing PR and communication programmes for healthcare and medical technology start-ups in Oxfordshire.

Immediately prior to becoming a consultant, Gillian worked for Standard Life Healthcare, where she had responsibility for the Press Office and Public Affairs.

During this period Gillian worked with the DoH and other key figures in healthcare to develop public healthcare programmes and with the Treasury to explore healthcare funding programmes.

More recently, she has been working on clinical and patient engagement programmes within the Public sector, and providing consultation on a social and health welfare funding initiative.

Gillian is also an experienced media and communications mentor and she provides media programmes that are run in association with practising print and broadcast journalists.

Clive Booth

Clive Booth is a social media, public relations and public affairs specialist. Previously a Parliamentary candidate, he is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Royal Society of Arts and Commerce.

Professionally Clive has consulted for numerous medical and healthcare organisations, including: Schering Healthcare fertility treatments; Conceptus Inc's launch of falloposcopy; Medtronic's innovative pacemaker treatment for people with Parkinson's Disease; Combat Stress, the Forces charity treating servicemen with Post Traumatic Stress Disorders; BLESMA, the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association; Cook Medical Devices Ltd and worked closely with the Department of Health, Select Committees, All Party Parliamentary Groups, MPs and the House of Lords in support of Smoke Free North East's campaign to secure legislation to ban smoking in public places. He is currently Chairman of the Royal College of Radiologists; Clinical Radiology Patients Liaison Group. At the start of his career he worked on Accountancy Age and Financial Decisions and then spent six years with the Financial Times.

Duncan Barkes

Duncan’s experience includes in-house roles in the medical and healthcare sectors with positions at Action Medical Research and Standard Life Healthcare. He has also been PR Director of a West Sussex based creative agency looking after some of the UK's leading brands.

Seven years ago Duncan moved into a full time career in broadcasting and journalism and has held the position of Regional Programme Controller and Regional Managing Director for a number of award-winning radio stations in South East England.

He is, however, happiest behind the mic and he has presented shows for Spirit FM in West Sussex and Radio City/City Talk 105.9 in Liverpool where he was part of the launch team. He can currently be heard on talkSPORT, the UK's only national commercial speech radio station, where he presents the 'Through the Night' phone-in and talk show and conducts a variety of interviews with celebrities, activists and politicians.

Duncan has worked with high profile political figures in the London Mayoral elections and the General Election, and played a leading role in a highly successful campaign to save his local hospital.

Steve Power

Steve Power has over 25 years experience in the media both in radio and TV. His radio career has seen him present the leading commercial radio breakfast show in the South for the last 11 years on Wave 105.

His previous experience includes presenting shows at Talk Radio and Virgin Radio as well as extensive management experience with the Capital Radio group where he was responsible for running their services south of London as well as three successful station licence reapplications.

His TV credits include series for the Discovery Channel and in-depth documentaries on England footballers. Steve has also spent the last 14 years working closely with the music industry as well as a host of corporate clients providing guidance and training in managing media relationships. Steve has also been part of a Sony Gold award winning team, the radio equivalent of the Oscars for his work on the first National Music Day.

Dr Neil Bindemann

Neil has worked in healthcare education and communication for over 15 years.

He has worked with various not-for-profit organisations and commercial companies to design and develop programmes/projects aimed at supporting the communication between patients and healthcare professionals across the NHS. Working across primary and secondary care, he has several years of experience in networking and building relations with leading UK and international healthcare professionals. Neil has been instrumental in stimulating various healthcare initiatives and it is his interest and passion for ‘quality of life’ that has lead to the creation of Lifepsychol®. This is a project that has included the development and running of 2 annual Quality of Life conferences, for healthcare professionals, and the creation of a new quality of life monitoring tool, called Lifepsychol^QoL.