Pact appoints Professor Jim McManus as public health advisor

Today, Pact has welcomed Professor Jim McManus as its pro-bono Public Health Advisor.  Prof McManus will provide specialist expertise to the charity’s trustees and senior staff. The appointment aims to further the charity’s mission by supporting the development of professional practice and services to improve the health and wellbeing of prisoners, people with convictions, and their children and families. 

Prof Jim McManus is President of the UK Association of Directors of Public Health and Director of Public Health for Hertfordshire, a county of more than 1.2 million people. As well as being a registered Public Health Specialist and Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, he is a Chartered Psychologist, a Chartered Scientist Fellow and a member of the Crisis and Disaster Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. For three years, he also worked at national social justice charity, Nacro, who maintain close links with Pact. 

Most recently, Jim co-created the national public mental health collaborative for Covid-19, co-chaired the national review of suicide prevention plans in England and was a member of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health’s programme on suicide and self-harm prevention competencies. He has just completed three years as Chair of the Behavioural Science and Public Health Network and was a co-author of the National Strategy for Behavioural Science in Public Health. Jim has been an advisor on health and care to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference since 2003 and is an advisor to the Board of Catholics for AIDS Support and Prevention. 

Pact CEO, Andy Keen-Downs, welcomed Prof McManus’ appointment, saying: 

"As a charity working at the intersection of criminal justice, child and family welfare, and mental health and wellbeing, Professor Jim McManus’s appointment will be hugely beneficial as we continue to develop our services and solutions.  His huge wealth of expertise will be invaluable to our trustees, and to our leadership and management teams, as we seek to join up systems and build effective practice to enable people caught up in the criminal justice system to live healthy, crime-free lives."