Rod ThomsonRoderick Peter MacGregor Thomson

MEd, MSc, Dip(Adult Education), Dip(HV), RHV, RMN, RGN, FPCert, FRCN

Roderick Thomson was awarded Fellowship of the Royal College of Nursing in 2002 for his outstanding contribution to the development and delivery of public health nursing in partnership with client groups and other agencies.

Rod is a public health specialist at South Sefton Primary Care Trust and Associate Director of Public Health for Citysafe in Liverpool (the city’s joint Community Safety Partnership and Drug & Alcohol Action Team).

Rod is well known locally, nationally and internationally for his exceptional leadership in setting the direction for nurses working in public health. His innovative contributions on issues such as sexual health, drug abuse and social deprivation are many and varied and begin with his work in Glasgow as a health visitor. Here, often working collaboratively with other agencies and community representatives, he helped to foster several public health projects that improved life for local people by, for example, working with homeless people and those whose first language was not English.

In 1993, Rod was seconded to Mersey Regional Health Authority to direct the development of the region’s teenage pregnancy prevention campaign. At the heart of the programme was an enhanced role for family planning nurses, who were enabled to provide contraception under protocol when doctors were not present. Rod devised training programmes to ensure they could take on this new responsibility and for the creation of nurse-led clinics across the region that greatly increased access to contraception for young women. Following this local success, the model has been adopted nationally and became a benchmark for sexual health services, bringing benefit to thousands.

Other projects he has led include the introduction of NHS Direct to the three North Mersey Health Authorities and a Department of Health funded drugs prevention communication campaign targeted at young people within the Merseyside Health Action Zone. He has forged partnerships with a range of local agencies to reduce the impact of drug-related crime and to improve community safety. One aspect of this approach is his development of the UK’s first inter-agency database on drug misuse that combines information from police, probation, social services, the NHS and voluntary sector treatment agencies. In 2001, this North West system was adopted as the new national standard for monitoring drug misuse, commended by the Home Office and Cabinet Office as a model of good practice.

Working with the Public Health Laboratory Service, he developed a regional database to monitor the infection patterns and treatment of people infected with HIV. This HIV/AIDS database has received national and international commendation for its contribution to HIV prevention and treatment. Rod has also worked in locations such as Cuba and Lithuania on behalf of the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

He has presented his work at national and international conferences and seminars and is widely published in academic and professional journals. In 2001, in recognition of his considerable achievements, Rod was elected Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health. In 2005 he was elected as an International Nurse Leader by Gamma Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International, the Honour Society of Nursing.

Publications

Here are just a few of Rod’s numerous publications:

  • Coauthor ‘Effects of nightlife activity on health’, Nursing Standard (2005) 19(30), 63-71.
  • Coauthor ‘A potent cocktail’, Nursing Standard (2004) 18(47) 4-11 August.
  • ‘Being in the know’, Nursing Standard (2004) 18(34) 5-11 May.
  • Coauthor ‘Sexual behaviour of young people in international tourist resorts’, Sexually Transmitted Infections (2004) 80, 43-47.
  • Coauthor ‘The role of an international nightlife resort in the proliferation of recreational drugs’, Addiction (2003) 93, 1713-1721.
  • Coauthor ‘An investigation into the microflora of Heroin’, J Med Microbiology (2002) 51, 1-8.