Advisory Steering Group

4M’s Advisory Steering Group currently consists of the following members:

Professor Jane Anderson, Professor Susan Bewley, Dr Laura Byrne, Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan (Chair), Gill Gordon, Fiona Hale, Dr Vicky Johnson, Longret Kwardem, Rebecca Mbewe, Angelina Namiba, Dr Shema Tariq, Dr Pat Tookey, Dr Alice Welbourn, Dr Alison Wright.

Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan (Chair)

Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan (Chair) is a Consultant Physician in Sexual Health and HIV Medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust. She is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University London and her research and advocacy focuses on reducing inequity in sexual health and HIV. She led the first study exploring intimate partner violence experienced by women living with HIV in the UK. She is a trustee of SWIFT (the Supporting Women with HIV Information Network) and a co-founder of SAHAR (South Asian HIV Advisory Resource). She chairs the External Relations Subcommittee of the British HIV Association and is a medical adviser to NAZ, a charity aiming to improve the sexual health of ethnic minorities. She is also Education Lead of Race & Health, a collective aiming to reduce the adverse effects of racism, xenophobia and discrimination that lead to poor health.

Professor Jane Anderson CBE, BSc, MBBS, PhD, FRCP, FRSA, SFFMLM

I am a consultant physician and clinical researcher in HIV Medicine in East London at both Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and at Barts Health NHS Trust. I have helped establish services for women and families affected by HIV, with the aim of securing equitable, joined–up, person centred, collaborative approaches to HIV related care and prevention.

I am co-founder of the Europe-wide HIV Outcomes Initiative, which works to secure best long-term outcomes for people living with and affected by HIV. I chair the Board of Trustees, National AIDS Trust, and co-chair of London’s HIV Fast Track Cities Leadership Group. I am a past Chair of the British HIV Association.

Professor Susan Bewley

I have been passionate about HIV since the very beginning of the pandemic as I had two childhood friends with haemophilia. Both brothers died, the first of a mysterious infection in 1981 when I was a medical student and the second of AIDS just a few years before HAART became available. I helped set up multidisciplinary teamworking, guidelines and ethical services in the busiest HIV antenatal service in the UK in the 1990s, always trying to keep services personalized and evidence based as treatments and outcomes changed so dramatically over the decades.

I am convinced that pregnant women must be treated respectfully and protected from stigma, shame and abuse. Their human rights are so easily overwhelmed, even by the most well-intentioned of doctors. It is only by working ‘with’ women as equals that we get the best results ‘for’ women and their children. Peer support and advocacy go a long way in redressing power imbalances and empowering women living with HIV.

Vicky Johnson

Vicky Johnson is Director of the Centre for Remote and Sustainable Communities at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) and is an Honorary Associate at IDS. She has over 20 years of experience leading international teams as a principal investigator, complemented by her entrepreneurship and multi-stakeholder engagement in the international non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector.

Research interests include understanding how marginalised people can be supported as agents of change in rapidly changing environmental, political and cultural contexts. Recent research includes: Youth Uncertainty Rights (YOUR) World Research with marginalised youth in Ethiopia and Nepal (Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)- FCDO’s Poverty Alleviation Fund). Vicky’s most recent book with Andy West is: Children’s Participation in Global Contexts: Going Beyond Voice (2018, Routledge).

Fiona Hale

Fiona is passionate about the work women and girls are doing everywhere in their communities and supporting others around them. For her, this is the motivational stuff of life – yet this work is often done without recognition, support, funding or payment. While she is not living with HIV herself, she thinks women living with HIV have done amazing feminist work to deepen the global understanding of intersectional and gendered inequalities, and is proud to be involved in the HIV response as a collaborator and supporter.

She works as an independent consultant and Salamander Trust Associate, focusing on gender, HIV, violence against women and girls, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. She’s a member of the Making Wavescollective, part of the 4M advisory steering committee, and a Trustee of Nomad (a community of young people and collaborators who come from all walks of life including migrants and people who have experience of being a refugee or asylum seeker, based in Harrow, London), and LIVErNORTH (a national liver patient support group).

Dr Shema Tariq

Shema is a Clinical Research Fellow at UCL’s Institute for Global Health, and Honorary Consultant HIV Physician at Mortimer Market Centre. Her research focuses on women living with HIV, and she has specific expertise in HIV and pregnancy, and patient and public involvement in research.

She is Chair of the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV’s Lay Public Research Panel, and Trustee of Positively UK and Tommy’s Baby Charity. She was Vice-Chair of the British HIV Association’s Pregnancy and HIV Guidelines Committee from 2018-2020.

Pat Tookey PhD, FFPH

Pat is a non-clinical epidemiologist with a focus on women and children’s health. She spent over 30 years in teaching and research, working mainly on infections in pregnancy and childhood (including HIV, syphilis, rubella, neonatal herpes and cytomegalovirus), antenatal screening and immunisation.

She was responsible for the National Study of HIV in Pregnancy and Childhood (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/nshpc/) at UCL’s Institute of Child Health until her retirement from full time work at the end of 2015. She contributed to the development of antenatal infection screening programmes, and the BHIVA Guidelines on HIV and Pregnancy, and has an extensive list of publications.

Alice Welbourn

Alice Welbourn

I was diagnosed with HIV in 1992 when I was expecting a baby. Sadly, that was before the days of anti-retroviral medication and I was advised not to go ahead with the pregnancy. I was lucky to have excellent supportive care throughout this trauma, but many women still, despite the huge advances in science, which can enable them to have HIV-free babies, still experience enormous psychosocial challenges along their perinatal journeys.

This is why this programme, which provides such excellent peer-led care, respect and support is especially close to my heart. It is what every woman going through pregnancy deserves, if she wants it. I am a writer, researcher, trainer, anthropologist and activist, mother, partner and citizen of the world.

Dr Alison Wright

Dr Wright is a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the Royal Free hospital in London, where she is the clinical lead for infectious diseases and HIV in pregnancy.

She is the immediate past Vice-President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and is currently a National Specialty Advisor for Obstetrics to NHS England and NHS Improvement and a clinical member of the GMC council.

Dr Wright’s clinical interests include childbirth trauma, urogynaecology, infections in pregnancy, maternal medicine and intrapartum care.

She has a long history of supporting mentor mothers to support women living with HIV, via Positively UK, 4M and Salamander Trust.

Dr Wright is the UK representative for FIGO Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health committee and has advised the WHO on various guidelines.

She is part of the BHIVA guideline writing group and co-authored the BHIVA guidelines for the management of HIV in pregnancy and postpartum.

X

Forgot Password?

Join Us