OVID Health appoints high-profile leaders as senior counsel

Independent communications agency OVID Health has appointed Niall Dickson, professor David Salisbury and Athena Lamnisos as senior counsel, providing strategic advice and thought leadership across several projects involving healthcare and pharma clients.

In addition to these appointments, Grace Holland has joined the team as account manager.

For more than thirty years Niall Dickson has been at the centre of health policy and regulation and most recently was CEO of the NHS Confederation, representing UK health service organisations.

He was formerly CEO and registrar of the General Medical Council and is a well-respected leader in health policy and communications. His previous roles include CEO of the King’s Fund, the BBC’s social affairs editor and health correspondent, as well as editor of Nursing Times. He was awarded a CBE for patient safety in 2017.

Prof Salisbury was director of immunisation at the Department of Health until the end of 2013. He was responsible for the national immunisation programme and led the introduction of many new vaccines.

He is the chair of the Global Certification Commission and Chatham House’s Global Health Programme Associate Fellow. He previously chaired the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, the WHO committee that sets global immunisation policy. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 2001.

Athena Lamnisos is a senior third sector leader and is currently CEO of leading women's cancer research charity, The Eve Appeal. Athena is experienced at forging partnerships between private, public and not for profit sectors. She has a track record of directing successful change programmes in the arena of public health and oncology and is passionate about making service user voices central to strategy.

Grace Holland joins OVID from specialist life science PR agency Zyme Communications, where she managed client accounts in the respiratory, oncology, digital, diagnostics and AI sectors, helping to build corporate value and generate interest with scientific and investor audiences. Grace’s academic background is in biology specialising in genetics.

OVID was founded in 2018 by ex-Lib Dem health adviser and agency leader Jenny Ousbey. In recent weeks the agency has won and been highly commended as New Agency of the Year (PR Moment and PR Week Awards 2020).

In the past year the agency has achieved six-figure growth and launched the Patient Partnership Index, an initiative that aims to help create better partnerships between the pharma industry and patient communities.