FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 16.2.26
Professor Kamila Hawthorne MBE to become Chair of Pathway, the specialist homeless and inclusion health charity
Pathway is delighted to announce that Professor Kamila Hawthorne MBE has been appointed to be the new Chair of its Board. She will formally take on the role at the charity’s February board meeting. Kamila brings a wealth of experience including clinical research, many years of front-line clinical practice in some of the UK’s most deprived communities and national leadership, most recently as Chair of the RCGP Council. Kamila has a long-held, personal commitment to action on health inequalities, this combined with her breadth of contacts across the health service and much respected leadership skills will be a huge asset to Pathway.
Kamila becomes only the 3rd Chair of Pathway’s board, following Professor Aidan Halligan who founded the charity and led it until his untimely death in 2015, and Lesley Morphy OBE who led the charity for the next nine years, including overseeing the agreement of a strategic partnership (and group merger) with the national homeless charity Crisis in 2020.
Kamila’s appointment comes at a critical time for healthcare for people facing the worst health inequalities. The health outcomes for people experiencing homelessness are dreadful: the current average of death for men is 45, and for women 43, many dying from treatable medical conditions. Pathway was therefore very pleased to see the key health commitments the Government has made in its recently published national action plan for homelessness, including ending discharges from hospital to the street. Delivery against those ambitions is essential, but question marks remain over the NHS’s ability to deliver these commitments at the same time as implementing the Ten-Year Plan, launching ‘neighbourhood health’ and restructuring the whole commissioning landscape. Pathway is committed to working with Government and our partners across the NHS to ensure they are turned into a reality and become part of the new neighbourhood health services.
Richard Guest, Pathway’s interim chair said:
“The whole board were delighted to approve Kamila’s appointment as our new Chair. With the NHS in one of its periodic states of flux and primary care very much at the centre of debates on the future shape of care, it feels completely right for Pathway’s new chair to bring serious clinical credibility and national leadership experience to the board. With her lifelong commitment to improving care quality for marginalised and excluded communities, Kamila’s personal values and national reputation ensure we have the right person to help shape the next phase of Pathway’s development.”
Kamila Hawthorne said:
“It’s so exciting to be getting stuck in at Pathway. I’ve long been impressed with the charity’s vitally important work tackling extreme health inequalities and ending homelessness and their success at driving impactful change at both the local and national level. At this critical time for the NHS, we must continue to ensure that tackling extreme health inequalities is central to its future and not sidelined as a niche issue. The Pathway team are ambitious in this regard. I’m looking forward to working with them to push for the system change needed across both primary and secondary care to ensure the needs of the most marginalised people in our communities are met.”
Pathway’s CEO, Alex Bax said:
“Kamila’s decision to join Pathway’s board and become our chair is fantastic news. The current environment for small specialist charities working alongside the NHS is particularly challenging but I know that Kamila’s leadership experience, clinical credibility and national networks combined with her personal commitment to improving outcomes for the most excluded, to clinical quality and to our core values – compassion, humanity and social justice – make her a perfect fit for Pathway.“
Matt Downie, Chief Executive at Crisis, said:
“We are delighted that Kamila has taken on this vital role, leading Pathway at a time when homelessness continues to rise across the country. At Crisis we see first hand how devastating homelessness can be for people’s health and life chances. This is why we are looking forward to working with Kamila to highlight the challenges people experiencing homelessness face and advocating for systemic change. Together, we want to reach the ultimate goal where homelessness, and the extreme health inequalities it has caused, are a thing of the past.”
Notes to editors
1. To arrange an interview with Kamila Hawthorne or Alex Bax, Pathway’s CEO, contact Steph Sykes, Pathway Communications Manager via stephanie.sykes@pathway.org.uk or on 07967100404.
2. Pathway is the leading homeless and inclusion health charity. We work with the NHS to improve healthcare for people experiencing homelessness and deep social exclusion. Our work focuses on developing and implementing evidence-based models of care, supporting specialist professionals, and influencing public policy to ensure health services play their part in ending homelessness.
3. The Faculty for Homeless and Inclusion Health is a multi-disciplinary network focused on health care for people experiencing homelessness and other excluded groups. Our aim is to improve the quality of healthcare for people experiencing homelessness and others in inclusion health groups. Hosted by Pathway, the network brings together a wide range of people working in the sector, who care and reaffirm the fundamental right for all patients to be treated with dignity, compassion and respect.
4. Kamila Hawthorne was Chair of RCGP Council until December 2025. She has been a GP in South Wales for 31 years, having qualified from Somerville College, Oxford, in 1984, and following completing her GP training in Nottingham in 1988. An academic medical educator as well as a GP, she has been Head of the Graduate Entry Medicine Programme at Swansea University and is currently on the Trustee Boards of the Kings Fund and Moondance Cancer Initiative, and Chair of the National Academy for Social Prescribing. She is also a Bevan Commissioner and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. With wide experience of general practice and running community projects in deprived communities with high prevalences of diabetes and heart disease, Kamila has been named ‘GP of the Year’ twice and was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to General Practice.
ENDS