Lord Nigel Crisp has unique experience of health and health services globally, having run the largest health organisation in the world and subsequently worked in several low- and middle-income countries in Africa and South Asia.

He is an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords in the UK and works and writes mainly on global health.

He was Chief Executive of the English National Health Service (NHS) - the largest health organisation in the world with 1.4 million employees - and Permanent Secretary of the UK Department of Health, from 2000 to 2006. He led major reforms during this period which brought significant improvements to the NHS.

He had previously been Chief Executive of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals, one of the UK's leading academic centres, and Regional Director for the NHS in London. His earlier career was in industry and charities.

Lord Nigel Crisp founded the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health and the global campaign on nursing, Nursing Now and the Zambia UK Health Alliance, all of which he co-chaired. He is on the advisory board of several organisations including the African Centre for Global Health and Social Development and The Walker Institute.

He is an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Medicine. He was formerly a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health and Regent's Lecturer at Berkeley.

He has published extensively in academic journals and elsewhere. His books include:

• Health is Made at Home, Hospitals are for Repairs - Building a Healthy and Health-Creating Society. SALUS 2020.
• African Health Leaders: Making Change and Claiming the Future; Ed with Francis Omaswa; OUP 2014.
• 24 Hours to Save the NHS: The Chief Executive's Account of Reform 2000 to 2006; OUP 2011.

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Preface. About the author. List of abbreviations used. Introduction. Overview (1) - health and health systems. Overview (2) - pandemics, politics, climate change and global solidarity. Health, poverty and powerlessness. Health, wealth and power. Unfair trade (1) - exporting health workers. Unfair trade (2) - importing ideas and ideology. Learning from low- and middle-income countries. Learning from communities in our own country. Practical knowledge (1) - people, communities and health workers. Practical knowledge (2) - science, equity and systems. Some conclusions. Action. Appendix. Index.