Alf Collins
Freelance Health Consultant
Professor Alf Collins is a freelance health consultant, focussing on supporting healthcare teams to work in partnership with patients by sharing decisions, planning care and supporting self management
From 2016-2023, he was NHS England’s National Clinical Director for personalised care. Shared decision making, personalised care and support planning, self management support, social prescribing and health literacy sat within his policy portfolio and he helped lead on implementation of ‘Universal Personalised Care’ (https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/universal-personalised-care-implementing-the-comprehensive-model/), one of 5 key shifts for the NHS in the 2019 Long Term Plan.
He is an internationally respected authority on person-centred care and has published widely on shared decision making, measurement in person-centred care, self management support, high value care and ‘Rethinking Medicine’
He was a community consultant in pain management for many years and also worked for a decade with the Health Foundation, helping lead applied research and implementation programmes in person centred care.
He has honorary fellowships from the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of General Practitioners and a Visiting Professorship in Healthcare Policy at Coventry University. He is a Trustee of Picker Europe and the Patients Association.
