Richard Stubbs is the Chief Executive Officer at Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network and Vice Chair of the AHSN Network, Richard is a leading health innovation expert who passionately believes in the role of technology and life sciences in improving patient care and driving economic growth, and through his varied non-executive and voluntary roles, Richard has an established track record of bringing together sectors and regions in ways which benefit health, skills and growth.

As a long-standing member of the NHS Assembly, as Vice-Chair of the AHSN Network, which represents the 15 AHSNs across England, as a member of The Health Foundations adopting Innovation advisory group, and as a commissioner for the NHS Innovation and Life Sciences Commission, Richard is helping to shape the future of the NHS and to steer major health innovation programmes. In 2022 Richard created the new national Innovate Awards to recognise and reward health innovators across the NHS and industry, in partnership with the NHS Confederation.

Richard has recently become a fellow of the Sciana Health Leaders’ Network, a programme which brings senior leaders with diverse professional backgrounds from across Europe together, to share the skills and knowledge needed to make change happen in complex systems and address current and future challenges facing leaders in health and healthcare

Richard represents the UK on the International Health Federation’s Global Scientific Committee which curates their World Hospital Congress and he also Chairs the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority’s India Trade Advisory Board, overseeing the development of business and trade collaborations with one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and is a Healthcare UK Trusted Advisor, providing strategic input into the UK Department for International Trade’s healthcare export activity.

Commitment to diversity and inclusion runs through everything Richard does, and he has twice been recognised by the Health Service Journal in their Top 50 BAME Powerlist as “one of the BAME figures exercising the most power and influence in English health policy.” As Co-Chair of the NHS Confederation’s BME Leadership Network, and a member of the NHS Confederation’s NED Task Force, he plays a central role in increasing diversity within the NHS leadership. Richard is passionate about the importance of greater diversity within innovation and has conceived a national programme which seeks to address this issue, this work led to a series of pledges which have been adopted nationally by the AHSNs.

Proud of his Yorkshire roots, Richard undertakes a variety of roles focused on developing the region as a great place to live and work, including chairing the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority Local Enterprise Partnership, and chairing the advisory board for Sheffield Hallam University’s Advanced Wellness Research Centre (AWRC), a £14m research institution established to develop innovations that will improve population health and physical activity. He is also a visiting fellow at Sheffield Hallam University.

Richard is a Director of the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park which was developed following the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and is delivering the future of health and wellbeing through transformational research, innovation and applied technology. He’s also Chair of the NIHR Children and Young People MedTech Cooperative MIC Steering group, the only dedicated paediatric NIHR MIC.

Richard is a vocal proponent of tackling health inequalities. In 2020 he co-authored the influential report Levelling Up Yorkshire and Humber, Health as the new wealth post-COVID on the link between regional productivity and population health. He went on to present the report’s recommendations at a virtual evidence session hosted by the House of Lords Public Services Committee. These recommendations subsequently contributed to the Committee’s levelling up positioning paper, which was sent to the Prime Minister calling for ‘better targeted’ plans that protect health, education and skills in more deprived areas of the country. Working with the thinktank Public Policy Projects, Richard has chaired a series of roundtables and a report entitled The Digital Divide: reducing inequalities for better health which focuses on what digital health can do for underserved populations, with clear recommendations for Government on this agenda.

In autumn 2021 Richard was recognised as Business Leader of the Year in the Yorkshire Post’s prestigious Excellence in Business Awards. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Leadership Fellow of St George’s House, Windsor Castle. He is also a member of Maltby Learning Trust, a multi-academy trust of secondary and primary schools across Rotherham and Doncaster. Richard has recently joined the board of Westfield Health as a Non-Exec Director and in his spare time he coaches an under 11’s football team. Until recently he was also an Ambassador for Welcome to Yorkshire, supporting the region to be a compelling destination for investment, jobs and new infrastructure.

Read full biography, including recent publications here