Gerry Allen, PA Co-Lead. Gerry Allen has been a Public Advisor at the University of Liverpool since May 2020. In that time, much of his focus has been with the study Perceptions of risk and experience of the COVID-19 pandemic for households, communities, and organisations in the Liverpool City Region’ led by Professor Mark Gabbay. Gerry is a highly experienced Public Sector leader. He has worked in the Liverpool City Region for over 20 years in the charitable and public sectors, leading the development of early years children’s services in Knowsley from the early 2000s firstly as Manager of Halewood Sure Start Local Programme (preceding Children’s Centres), through to holding the position of Service Improvement & Development Manager with borough-wide responsibility for Children’s Centre services in Knowsley. He currently works for West Lancashire Borough Council as a Grants Manager liaising with the Voluntary, Community, Faith & Social Enterprise sector.

Gerry was born and raised in North Liverpool and grew up with the lived experience of health inequalities across families and neighbourhoods. Professionally and academically, he has spent much of his career dealing with the impact of poverty and health inequalities and seeking to improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged. Gerry has always shown a commitment to serving the community, placing a strong emphasis on research or evidence-based decisions and he welcomes the chance to work with academic institutions and participate in research. As an example, Gerry was a contributor to the UCL Institute of Health Equity report ‘An Equal Start: Improving Outcomes in Children’s Centres’ 2012: a project led by Professor Michael Marmot. More recently, Gerry has been involved with professional training and the use of Action Learning Sets to embed and disseminate good practice. He has an ability to work with multiple partners including parents, councillors, academics, professionals across children’s, health services and the voluntary sector and Council leaders. Gerry values his experience as a Public Advisor and the opportunity to link with colleagues across the region and the opportunity to work with the academic colleagues has been very refreshing

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