ASH Board of Trustees
ASH is governed by a Board of Trustees of up to 12 people. The Board is made up of a wealth of experience and knowledge in the tobacco control field. Its members are chosen at our Annual General Meeting by an Advisory Council of more than 70 eminent people from fields such as medicine, public health, public relations and politics.

Professor John Moxham
Professor Moxham is Chair of the ASH Board of Trustees. He has been a consultant in Respiratory Medicine at King's College Hospital since 1982. He is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at King's College, London School of Medicine. He has been interested in tobacco control for more than 20 years, initiated the Tobacco Committee of the British Thoracic Society and in the 1990's was Chairman of ASH. In 1997 he became Dean on the King's College Hospital campus and in 2000 Vice Dean of the enlarged KCL School of Medicine. Since 2003 he has been Medical Director of KCH.
Professor John Britton
Professor Britton is Professor of Epidemiology and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Public Health at Nottingham University, and is a consultant in respiratory medicine at Nottingham City Hospital. He also chairs the Royal College of Physicians tobacco advisory group.
Ed Gyde
Ed is CEO of a leading London-based social marketing agency, audience communications. He has worked in the communications industry for over 15 years and has masterminded many award-winning national/international tobacco control campaigns for organisations such as No Smoking Day, the British Thoracic Society, the British Lung Foundation and the European Respiratory Society.
Professor Martin Jarvis OBE
Professor Jarvis is Professor Emeritus of Health Psychology, University College, and London. He has been active in research into nicotine addiction, smoking cessation, and passive smoking for the past thirty years and is a member of the World Health Organisation’s Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation and the Royal College of Physicians’ Tobacco Advisory Group.
Jean King
Jean King is Vice-Chair of the ASH Board of Trustees. She has a background in biochemistry, human nutrition and education, and more recently in science policy, research management and public health. As Director of Tobacco Control at Cancer Research UK, she established the charity’s portfolio in tobacco policy research, advocacy and international tobacco control, and its stand on the non-acceptability of tobacco industry funding for research.
Betty McBride
Betty McBride is Director of Policy and Communications at the British Heart Foundation, promoting the work of the charity and campaigning for heart health improvements. Her teams produced the highly effective, award-winning smoking cessation adverts featuring cigarettes which dripped fat and called on people to “give up before you clog up.” She sits on the Council of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC). Before moving to the voluntary sector, she was a newspaper journalist and documentary maker at BBC TV.
Dr Jennifer Mindell
Dr Mindell is a clinical senior lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health at University College, London. She trained in general practice before moving to public health medicine, gaining a PhD from the University of London in 2002 and being elected Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health in 2005. Experienced in tobacco control and research in Oxfordshire, Nottinghamshire, London and nationally, she leads on tobacco control for the Faculty of Public Health.
Dr Lesley Owen
Dr Owen is an analyst in the Centre for Public Health Excellence at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Previous posts include senior public health advisor on tobacco at the Health Development Agency and senior research manager on tobacco at the Health Education Authority.
Simon Hopkins
Simon Hopkins became the Hon Treasurer of ASH, following his appointment as British Heart Foundation Finance Director in 2009.
Peter Kellner
Peter Kellner is a political commentator and President of YouGov. Over the last 30 or so years he has been a journalist with The Sunday Times, The Independent, New Statesman and Evening Standard newspapers.
He has also been a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and the Institute for Policy Studies, London and has advised several large corporations. He is the Chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society.
Professor Peter Kelly
Professor Kelly’s career began as a lecturer in medical statistics at Newcastle University and he also worked for Teesside University where he became a professor. He was a non-executive director for a local acute trust before making a career shift into the NHS in 2000.
He was appointed Director of Public Health for Middlesbrough for five years before taking up his current role where he provides senior leadership for public health across Teesside and the North East. He was extensively involved in the 2007/08 regional and national ‘Darzi’ review of the NHS and is a passionate advocate for tackling health inequalities and supporting Teesside and the North East region in general.
Dr Andy McEwen
Dr McEwen is a psychiatric nurse by training who specialised in the treatment of addictions. He is currently Assistant Director of Tobacco Studies at University College London and Executive Director of the NHS Centre for Smoking Cessation & Training (NCSCT). His main research interest is in finding new and better ways of helping smokers to quit. Andy also acts as a Senior Editor for Addiction and is Programme Director of the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference (UKNSCC).
Lord Rennard of Wavertree MBE
Lord Rennard sits in the House of Lords on the Liberal Democrat benches. He is Treasurer of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Diabetes and a Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health. As a frequent contributor in the House of Lords, he concentrates on Constitutional Affairs, Localism issues and health matters.









