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. Other work to date has included rapid reading contributions (most recently to the paper ‘Testing: What is the Strategy’). Dr Amanda Lamb described this response as “….exactly at the level we were hoping for and is very useful to us as we move forwards to publication”. Other work has included coding transcripts and contributions to the Public Advisors’ Forum.

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 is currently the ‘Town Manager’ for Halewood Town Council with a wider cross-generational brief. In 2020, much of his professional capacity has been dedicated to responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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 my 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, putting preschool children and families’ wellbeing (and now the residents of Halewood Town) at the heart of decisions and service quality, 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 has valued his 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.

Gerry is delighted to have recently join the ‘DynAIRx’ and MIDAS projects at the University of Liverpool. The opportunity become involved with these innovative projects investigating and seeking solutions to the health problems of society fits well with his personal and professional lived experiences, and he hopes to make a useful contribution alongside partners and peers.

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