Devon Drug and Alcohol Strategic Partnership

SRO: Steve Brown, Director of Public Health

Steve was appointed as Director of Public Health for Devon County Council in January 2021.

After completing his first degree in Sports Science and Leisure, Steve started his career in Public Health working for the NHS in Devon in 1995.

Steve completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Health Promotion and went on to undertake a master’s degree in Public Health at the University of the West of England. Steve remained working in the NHS, undertaking various senior public health roles including Acting and Interim Director of Public Health for South Hams and West Devon Primary Care Trust and Assistant Director for Devon Primary Care Trust.

In 2002 the Primary Care Group (PCG) became a Primary Care Trust (PCT) and during the next four years, he worked as the Acting and then Interim Director of Public Health. With changes to the NHS and the merger of the previous six PCTs into a single Devon Primary Care Trust in 2006, he was appointed as Assistant Director of Public Health. He joined the UK Public Health Register in 2006 and became a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health in the same year.

He transferred to Devon County Council on 1 April 2013 as Assistant Director of Public Health, becoming Deputy Director of Public Health in 2016. Steve then completed an 18-month secondment to Cornwall Council and the Council of the Isles of Scilly as the Service Director of Wellbeing and Public Health until he returned to Devon in April 2020.

Steve’s ambition is to increase the efforts of all partners to focus more on equity of access to health and care services, doing more to tackle inequalities in health, including addressing the wider determinants of health and crucially investing more in prevention.