Linda Smith – Chair of UKPHR Board
Linda retired from her senior public health post in 2019 after 11 years as public health lead for originally Aberdeen Community Health Partnership and laterally, Aberdeen City Health and Social Care Partnership (ACH&SCP). She provided leadership for health improvement with community planning partners and multidisciplinary workforces including primary care and community nursing. Linda was a member of the leadership team for both ACH&SCP and the Grampian public health system. She also provided professional leadership and management for a multidisciplinary team of health improvement and wellbeing practitioners. She chaired the Scottish Health Promotion Managers group between 2018 and 2019 during which the group was a key stakeholder to some of the multi-agency commission groups for the Scottish Government/COSLA programme of public health reform.
Linda started her career as a general nurse in Edinburgh which benefited her with both acute clinical and international experience, working in Australia and New Zealand. Her experience of working as a rural nurse on aboriginal reserves in the Northern Territory exposed her to the notion of community public health. She later became and worked as a health visitor in Scotland before becoming a lecturer in nursing and health studies at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. She taught and led on curriculum developments for undergraduate nursing and postgraduate specialist community public health nursing courses as well as the masters in health promotion programme. Linda also served as an external examiner on a Masters in Public Health Practice in England. She led on educational developments for community nursing whilst at NHS Education for Scotland as part of a Scottish Government programme of review of community nursing from 2006-2008. During this time, she developed a capability framework for a proposed new role in Scotland of community health nursing as well as one for advanced level of practice in community nursing.
Linda is a defined specialist in public health and has undertaken training to be an assessor of defined specialist portfolios and verifier for the practitioner route. A keen hill runner, Linda took up ultra-trail running in 2013 with achievements in the Alps, Oman, England and Wales. She also enjoys ski mountaineering, cycling and some climbing.
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