Hanover Health combines London public affairs and comms practices

Hanover Health has restructured its London business, bringing its public affairs and communications practices together.

The healthcare communications agency’s new London Health Team will be led by senior directors Alex Davies and Emma Gorton (pictured above), who report to Hanover Health’s managing director Andrew Harrison.

Harrison said: “Today’s environment of pioneering science and cost containment pressures means that clients are increasingly asking for a combination of health policy, access, and communications expertise to succeed. Many clients are organising internally in this way.

“Clients want experts, not generalists, and so we are retaining our award-winning specialist teams but bringing them closer together under a single leadership structure to help us go even further and faster in the future.”

Davies has more than a decade of experience in healthcare communications and is a specialist in corporate communications, media relations and issues and crisis management.

Gorton, a former PRWeek ‘30 under 30’ winner, has ten years of experience of healthcare PR and is a specialist in product and brand communications.

Together they will manage a team of over 35 at the London Health Team, which sits within an overall practice which includes Hanover Health’s international policy and access team in Brussels led by senior director Emma Eatwell and healthcare practices in Dublin and the Middle East.

Hanover Health’s London public affairs practice was formerly led by senior director James Woodhouse, who has now completed his fixed-term contract with the agency.

Woodhouse, who previously spent 12 years at Roche, will continue giving senior counsel to Hanover Health’s clients before pursuing his ambition to set up his own consulting business.

The restructure of Hanover’s London business comes one year after the healthcare communications agency’s acquisition by Canada’s Avenir Global, which recently appointed Miranda Dini as its global healthcare lead. In addition to Axon, whose European business Dini also leads, and Hanover, Avenir’s other health companies include Cherry, Madano, National, Padilla and Shift.