OUR TEAM

Kamran Abbasi

PATRON

Kamran is a doctor and editor. Following five years in hospital medicine he moved into senior editorial roles s at the BMJ, where he was deputy editor and acting editor. He is currently editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the UK’s oldest medical journal, and editor of the new online journal, JRSM Short Reports.

Kamran’s other passion is cricket and he has one of the best read blogs in world cricket on cricinfo.com, a website in the top 100 of world Internet rankings.

Lord Naren Patel Kt

Patron

Lord Naren Patel Kt has held several esteemed positions including Chair of the National Patient Safety Agency, Chair of the Specialist Training Authority, Chairman of the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland and Chairman of the Specialist Training Authority in Scotland, in addition to holding a life peerage in The House of Lords. He has also held the prestigious positions of President of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Chairman of the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges. 

Professor Raj Bhopal

PATRON

Raj Bhopal is Bruce and John Usher professor of public health in Edinburgh University and honorary consultant in public health with NHS Lothian. Born in India, he migrated with his family to the Gorbals in Glasgow. His work focuses on ethnic variation in disease, with a special emphasis on how to respond to this knowledge with more effective public health interventions and clinical services, particularly around cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Professor Ajay Shah

PATRON

Ajay Shah is British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology and Director of the Cardiovascular Division at King’s College London and King’s Health Partners AHSC. He is also the Director of the King’s British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence, one of the 2 largest such centres in the UK. He remains an active practising cardiologist with interests in percutaneous coronary intervention, heart failure and pulmonary hypertension.

Kiran C R Patel

Chairman of Trustees

Professor Patel graduated from Cambridge University in 1993 and currently has several roles and responsibilities. He works as a Chief Medical Officer and Consultant Cardiologist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire and Honorary Professor at Warwick University and Coventry University. He has subspecialty interests in ethnicity and cardiovascular disease, sports cardiology and heart failure with device therapy.

Kamlesh Khunti

Trustee

Professor Kamlesh Khunti is Professor of Primary Care Diabetes and Vascular Medicine, University of Leicester, UK. He leads a research group at the Leicester  Diabetes Centre undertaking research into the early identification and interventions in people with diabetes. His work has influenced national and international guidelines on screening and management of people with diabetes. He is Director of NIHR CLAHRC East Midlands

Wasim Hanif

Trustee

Wasim Hanif is a Professor of Diabetes & Endocrinology, Consultant Physician, & Head of Service in diabetes at University Hospital Birmingham.  He is the CAG lead for research in Diabetes & Endocrinology at Institute of Translation Medicine, Birmingham. He is an eminent authority on Diabetes, Obesity, and Ethnic health. He works with several national bodies, and professional groups in the UK. He has been involved with major research projects in diabetes and has published widely.  

Amitava Banerjee

Trustee

Dr Ami Banerjee is Associate Professor in Clinical Data Science at University College London, and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist across University College London and Barts NHS Trusts. In addition to general cardiology, he has special interest in heart failure and atrial fibrillation, and also the role of informatics and electronic health records in delivering better patient care. Ami has been a Trustee of the South Asian Health Foundation since 2014 and has been an active member of the Cardiovascular Working Group

Dr Amal Lad

Trustee

Dr Amal Lad is a GP based in West Midlands. He is passionate about using creative approaches to improving health awareness within the South Asian community. From his participation in the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, he has developed the “Meducasian” project which is a collaboration between health care professionals and local communities to break the stigma surrounding mental illness. Aside from being a doctor, Amal is a keen musician and has produced music for a number of film and theatre projects. Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmalLadMusic

Ranjit Dhillon

Trustee

Ranjit Dhillon is a Cardiac Nurse specialist based in Birmingham. She has an established career in cardiac rehabilitation and in 2016 joined a team establishing England's first familial hyperlipidaemia service for comprehensive assessment and cascade screening in the West Midlands 

Sarah Ali

Trustee

Dr Sarah Ali originally read Medicine at the University of Oxford. She underwent her specialist training in Diabetes and Endocrinology on the North West London Rotation, including Imperial College London where she was a Clinical Research Fellow from 2011 – 2012; her research interest at that time was in obesity and eating behaviours. Since 2016, she has been appointed as Consultant in Diabetes and Endocrinology at Royal Free London. In addition to this, she is the Clinical lead for the Barnet Diabetes Integrated service.

Harpreet Sood

Trustee

Dr Harpreet Sood is currently a NHS primary care doctor in London and a digital health expert. Harpreet also sits on the board of Health Education England, a £4.5bn organisation training and developing 160,000 staff across the NHS, where his focus is on developing digital and data science skills for the workforce. Harpreet trained as a clinical doctor at King’s College London and Imperial College Business School and completed a Masters in Public Health (MPH) at Harvard University.

Raj Gill 

SAHF Secretariat 

Raj is the Secretariat for SAHF and oversees the running of the office and general office management.