Overview

One of the key priorities for Cambridge Ahead has always been to improve the quality of life for those who live and work in the Cambridge area. The purpose of this project is to bring a greater understanding of quality of life in Greater Cambridge, and to promote this as the basis of decision-making about the city region’s future.

Currently in its second stage of the project RAND Europe administered a survey to representatives of a range of community stakeholders in the Greater Cambridge Area.

Quality of Life Project Group Chair: Professor Dame Carol Black

Professor Dame Carol Black is currently Chair of the British Library, the Centre for Ageing Better, and Think Ahead, the Government’s fast stream training programme for Mental Health Social Workers. She chairs NHS England/Improvement’s Advisory Board on Employee Health and Wellbeing, and is Adviser to NHSI and PHE on Health and Work. She is also a member of RAND Europe’s Council of Advisers, and of the Boards of the Institute for Employment Studies and UKActive.

In 2019 she completed a seven-year term as Principal of Newnham College Cambridge, where she was a Deputy Vice-Chancellor. She still sits on the University’s Strategy Board on Student Mental Health and Wellbeing. She is a Patron of the Women’s Leadership Centre in the Judge Business School.

Dame Carol has completed four independent reviews for the UK Government: of the health of the working-age population in 2008 as National Director for Health and Work; of sickness absence in Britain in 2011 as co-chair; of employment outcomes of addiction to drugs or alcohol, or obesity, in 2016; and on illicit drugs, demand, supply and treatment (Part I, for the Home Office, published in February 2020; Part 2 for DHSC imminent).

Professor Black is a past-President of the Royal College of Physicians, of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, and of the British Lung Foundation, and past-Chair of the Nuffield Trust for health policy. The Centre she established at the Royal Free Hospital in London is internationally renowned for research and treatment of connective tissue diseases such as scleroderma. She has been a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery.