Dr Edith Israel is an experienced senior NHS Leadership Director with senior management and leadership across sectors, specialising in palliative medicine, substance misuse and pain management. She has worked as the Deputy Executive Medical Director for the National Charity ‘We Are With You’ which looks after 100 000 people living with and impacted by mental health, alcohol and drug addiction in England and Scotland. She was previously the Head of Palliative & End Of Life Care (EOLC) for North West Surrey and the Medical Director at Woking and Sam Beare Hospice in Surrey. Following previous consultant posts at the world renown London Clinic, The Royal Marsden, The Royal Brompton as well as Imperial College NHS Trust. Edith is also the recipient of the Nye Bevan executive leadership scholarship, and the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson NHS Leadership Academy Senior Healthcare Leaders Award. She was awarded with First Class Distinction in healthcare leadership and management from the Universities of Birmingham and Manchester Business Schools, and has completed her MBA in healthcare leadership.


A graduate of Imperial College medical school in 2006, Edith has won several awards and scholarships including the Sir John Cass foundation award, the Vandervell foundation award, the Newcomen Collette scholarship, the Goldberg Schachmann and Freda Becker Memorial fund for involvement in medical research and most recently the NHS Leadership Academy Healthcare Leaders Awards. As a member of the of NHS Leadership Academy and an alumni of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Programme, her interest in clinical leadership, management and change improvement was sparked by early involvement in the Department of Health’s Chief Medical Officer Clinical Advisor Programme. Inspired by this, she went on to become the Lord Darzi fellow at Northwest London NHS Trust. With the support of the Acute Trust Board, she pioneered an advance care planning programme for the trust, aimed at improving end-of-life-care delivery whilst reducing unnecessary readmission within 30 days of discharge amongst frail, vulnerable patients in the last year of life.


Edith has presented at international and national programmes and continues to be one of the speakers at the World Cancer Congress. She has also taken up speaking positions at the Royal College of Physicians. She is also the co-author of the cardiology textbook ‘Cardiology To Impress’ published by imperial College Press, and has written chapters in other medical textbooks. Her Msc at the Cicely Saunders Institute of King’s College London, centred on the transition of care from hospital to the community for patients discharged with terminal cancer from oncology services. During her time as the London Northwest National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLARHC) fellow, Edith worked to develop a whole-systems approach to advance care planning (ACP), evaluating how ACP improves care delivery for patients in the last year of life.