About The Council of Deans of Health

The Council represents over 100 UK universities engaged in education and research for nursing, midwifery, and the allied health professions. At any one time, our members will educate around 200,000 current and future professionals and will carry out research that improves the population’s health and wellbeing.

Operating as a multi-professional organisation at the heart of policy and political debate, we aim to lead policy at national and UK level, promoting the essential contribution of our members to health and social care.

Our members are based in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar. We operate as a charity, registered across the UK.

We are committed to working in partnership, strengthening membership engagement and intelligence gathering to influence policy UK-wide for high quality education and research

Our Vision

Our vision is that governments in the UK are committed to quality education and research and a sustainable healthcare academic workforce, in order to safeguard and improve the health and wellbeing of the public.

Our Mission

We, on behalf of the UK university healthcare education sector, advance and promote healthcare education and research for the public benefit, through influencing Government policy and connecting our members.

Our Values

We are inclusive

We are innovative

We are impactful

Our Strategic Aims

We influence policy across the UK, promoting the essential contribution of our sector.

We offer excellent services to our members creating sustainable sector networks.

We advance healthcare education and research by strengthening our sector and organisation.

For more information, read our Council Strategy 2025.

Following extensive engagement with members, Trustees, staff and stakeholders, the Council is currently finalising a new strategy to run from 2025-2030, due to be agreed in June 2025.

Strategic Policy Groups

Strategic Policy Groups (SPGs) are a way for members to feed into the Council’s policy work. Each aligns with a key policy aim in the Council 2025 strategy. Each SPG is headed by a Chair with a member of the Council’s staff attached to it to facilitate and focuses on one key area of strategic interest. The SPGs help shape Council policy in their policy areas including feeding into briefings, submissions and calls for evidence. SPG meetings are largely held online, with the possibility of face-to-face meetings where agreed. The number of meetings will vary between groups but are held at least quarterly, some meetings may be required with short notice and regular attendance at meetings is an expectation of membership.

The current SPGs are:

Policy

The Council’s policy work is focused on specific areas including research, regulation, sector sustainability, innovation and pedagogy, and equality, diversity and inclusion.

The Council also works on sustainable funding, public affairs and data.

Governance

Membership

The Council of Deans of Health is made up of over 100 member universities in the UK engaged in education and research for nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions along with 5 associate members.

Each member organisation has two representatives, who are senior staff with strategic responsibilities for nursing, midwifery, and/or allied health professions. Normally the representatives are at dean or head of school (or equivalent) level, but a number of our members also have more senior university roles, such as pro-vice-chancellor.

Our membership is institutional, eligibility is defined in our membership criteria.

Governance

The Council’s governance is provided by a Board of Trustees comprising six independent trustees, six trustees drawn from the Council’s membership and the Chair.