The NHS visionary who won his own battle against the bulge
SIMON Stevens kicked off his NHS career doing a week of work experience as a hospital porter.
He has now been chief executive of NHS England for three years and in that time has rarely held back from making bold and controversial statements.
Just six months after landing the job in October 2014, he asked ministers for an unprecedented £8billion cash injection, as a bare minimum.
He has also repeatedly urged parents to be tougher on children, by restricting unhealthy snacks.
Last December he revealed plans to put 50,000 people at risk of diabetes on an NHS diet that includes lifestyle coaching, cookery classes and fitness sessions.
He told his own staff to slim down and exercise more to set an example.
Prior to the post, he spent nine years working for the world’s largest private health company, US-based UnitedHealth.
Before that he had worked for the NHS for almost 20 years, on the graduate management training scheme and then as a Labour Government senior adviser.
The 50-year-old is married to Maggie, an American public health expert. He has a son, 13, and daughter, 8.
Despite his anti-obesity mantra, he has had his own weight-loss battle and admitted he was once ‘fat’.
He became overweight while living in Minnesota, in the US, and blamed it on oversized, calorie-laden portions and a sedentary lifestyle.
But he managed to shed three stone in three years, partly with the help of a UnitedHealth incentive scheme.
It offered reduced health insurance premiums if staff met weight-loss targets.
Mr Stevens has encouraged UK companies to take on similar schemes.
To set an example to staff, and avoid wasting scarce NHS resources, Mr Stevens never claims expenses for hotels, meals, taxis or flights.
He also volunteered to take a 10 per cent pay cut when accepting the post, bringing his salary down to £190,000.
This is a stark contrast to his predecessor Sir David Nicholson, who earned £211,000 a year, claimed a further £50,000 in expenses and insisted on travelling first class.
Mr Stevens was born in Shard End, Birmingham. He was educated at St Bartholomew’s, an academy school in Newbury, Berkshire.
He went to Balliol College, Oxford University, and is said to have been close friends with Boris Johnson. From there he joined the NHS management training scheme and worked as a hospital porter and in a mortuary. Eventually he became a general manager of the Guys and St Thomas’ hospital in London.
He was later appointed adviser to two Labour health secretaries, Frank Dobson and Alan Milburn and in this role he oversaw policies which dramatically increased NHS funding.
Mr Stevens said his happiest experience of the NHS was the birth of his son, at St Thomas’ on Christmas Day in 2003.
There were very few patients and staff and he and his wife were allowed to stay in an empty ward ‘where we spent a very happy first night’.
His worst NHS memory was aged seven when he spent a school term in hospital with a complicated hip problem.