Members of WHO Collaborating Centre

MPhil, DipTP, MRTPI, FRSA, AoU
Emeritus Professor at WHO Collaborating Centre

Subject specialisms: Healthy spatial planning; neighbourhood design; sustainable urban environments.

Hugh Barton is an urbanist and town planner. In the 1980s, he founded the Urban Centre for Appropriate Technology, now the Centre for Sustainable Energy, in Bristol. He was Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre at UWE Bristol from 1998 to 2012. His books include Sustainable Settlements (1995), Healthy Urban Planning (for WHO, 2000, translated into six languages); Shaping Neighbourhoods - for local health and global sustainability (lead author, third edition 2021); The Routledge Handbook of planning for health and well-being  (lead editor, 2015); and City of Well-being (2017). His current activities include mountain walking, choral music, voluntary work for local environmental charities - and grandchildren.

FRTPI, HonMFPH, FRSPH
 
Michael is a Chartered Fellow town planner and honorary member of the Faculty of Public Health. He has worked at the intersection of planning and public health, and published research and guidance on the policy and practice of planning for health across the UK nations. He has a broad range of research interests on systems thinking and planning system levers for delivering population health outcomes, food environment, interface with urban design and use of health impact assessments.

Consultant in Public Health for Policy and International Health Public Health Wales

Liz is a Consultant in Public Health for Policy and International Health and the Programme Director for HIA at Public Health Wales (PHW). She is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool and holds a PhD in ‘Health Impact Assessment (HIA) as a tool to mobilise Health in all Policies’ from Maastricht University, The Netherlands. She has extensive experience in HIA, ‘Health in All Policies’ including incorporating health into spatial planning processes and plans, and provides training, advice and guidance about HIA and other IA processes.

Liz has worked on approximately over 500 HIAs of varying strategic levels, complexity and topics including the comprehensive ‘The Public Health Implications of Brexit in Wales: A HIA Approach’ (PHW, 2019) and the ‘Health Impact Assessment of Climate Change in Wales (PHW, 2023). She has been recognised as a Woman of Influence 2022 by RTPI Planner for her work in Spatial Planning and Public Health and has published extensively on HIA. She is also the lead for the International Health Co-ordinating Centre in Public Health Wales.

Carl Petrokofsky is a Consultant in Public Health. Until recently, he worked in the UK Health Security Agency’s Extreme Events and Health Protection Team to help improve the UK’s strategic and emergency response capability to extreme weather events. Prior to that he developed the ‘Healthy Places’ programme for Public Health England providing practical, evidence-based advice and guidance for local and national colleagues on how spatial planning of the built and natural environment can promote better health and wellbeing. 

In 2022, with Michael Chang and Dr Liz Green, he co-authored Public Health Spatial Planning in Practice: Improving Health and Wellbeing, a practical guide to using the planning system to promote better health in the community through the built and natural environment.