Brigitte is the Head of Health and Wellbeing at the South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and has over 37 years’ experience working in the NHS. She graduated as a Diagnostic Radiographer and has undertaken several clinical, leadership and educational roles. From 2016 she held the role of Assistant Operations Director at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, to lead on workforce HR and OD support which included staff engagement and Health and Wellbeing. Brigitte took on her current role in May 2021. With her creative vision, Brigitte has been very keen to make a difference to the Health and Wellbeing of the workforce across South Yorkshire. She became a menopause advocate in October 2021 and now leads on raising the awareness of menopause for all workforce in NHS and Social Care in South Yorkshire. Brigitte was born in Bethlehem, Palestine and has led on many overseas projects in health organisations in developing countries across three continents
SYNOPSIS: We urgently needed to tackle the taboo of menopause. We risked losing 10,000 South Yorkshire health and care staff due to menopause within five years. That’s 1 in 7 staff. Mission: menopause was a ground-breaking system-wide initiative. 15 health and care organisations worked across sectors to engage staff and make tangible changes. We showed that joint working can be real, not just rhetoric.
We got leaders and staff talking. We trained advocates; ran webinars, festivals, menopause cafés and conferences; and gained media coverage and system-wide accreditation. We engaged with over 50,000 of our 72,000 staff (70%), improving knowledge and wellbeing.