Dame Barbara Hakin, has been appointed as Chair of the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA).
Having been both a Primary Care Trust and Strategic Health Authority Chief Executive, Dame Barbara latterly served as Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer of NHS England, responsible for overseeing all national performance, with oversight of CCGs through the regional teams as well as specialised commissioning and all primary care commissioning and contracting. She has worked closely with Ministers and policymakers for almost two decades.
In her early career, she spent twenty years as a General Practitioner, moving on to be the Clinical Chair of Bradford Primary Care Group, then Chief Executive of the Primary Care Trust. During this time, she was instrumental in many initiatives which widened the role of all primary care professionals and moved care into the primary care setting, including community pharmacy.
The organisation’s previous CCA chair, John Bacon, joined in 2018 and successfully led the CCA through the unprecedented challenges that arose during the Covid-19 pandemic, at a time when the community pharmacy sector demonstrated its undeniable value to the public.
Dame Barbara said: “I am delighted to be appointed as Chair of the CCA. Pharmacies are vital to the local communities that they serve, as demonstrated during the Covid-19 pandemic. I look forward to working closely with the CCA Board and its executive team to help shape the future of community pharmacy, for the benefit of patients and the public”.
Malcolm Harrison, CEO of the CCA said: “I look forward to working closely with Dame Barbara who joins at a crucial time for the sector. Never has the need for further investment and a workforce strategy for the community pharmacy sector been more apparent than now.
I would also like to thank John Bacon who has been a great support to the organisation and to me personally over the past four years. His insight and guidance have been invaluable”.