My friend Nicola Close, who has died aged 75 of cancer, was a public health leader who made a major contribution to the field as chief executive of the Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH). Starting as its sole employee in 2007, she built an influential organisation currently employing 19 people.
This became especially evident during the Covid-19 pandemic, when directors of public health, whose role includes providing local leadership and implementing national guidance, were thrust into the spotlight. To support members to work more effectively, and strengthen communication between central government and local communities, Nicola helped break down barriers to data sharing, and secure regular meetings between directors of public health and UK chief medical officers. In 2025 she was made MBE for services to public health.
Born in Poole, Dorset, to June (nee Orson) and Douglas Close, a firefighter, Nicola attended Monmouth school for girls before studying mathematics at Somerville College, Oxford. There she met and married a fellow student, John Gilbert, in 1972. Divorced in 1982, she married Roger Flatman two years later.
During the 1980s Nicola gained an MA in philosophy (logic) from Birmingham University. She then worked as a maths and computing teacher at Westbourne high school in Ipswich, while also gaining a computer programming qualification and working as a computer analyst. In 1985 she moved to Cambridgeshire, as a consultant educational research analyst, and an adult education tutor.
In 1994 she was appointed regional health authority clinical audit coordinator for East Anglia. I first met Nicola during this time, when I was completing specialist training in public health. Evidence-based medicine was becoming increasingly important to health policy, and public health had a lead role in promoting these initiatives. Nicola was well set to apply her mathematical, computer and teaching skills to public health practice, and in 1997 she became education and development officer with the Anglia Clinical Effectiveness Team at the Institute of Public Health in Cambridge.
In 2001, she became director of Alpha (Access to Learning for the Public Health Agenda), providing public health and clinical governance education across the NHS, local authorities and voluntary sector.
Nicola, who was also a council member of the UK Public Health Association, recognised that wider social, economic and environmental factors determine health and wellbeing and, alongside her professional and family life in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, became a governor of Soham village college in 2004, two years after the terrible murders of two girls by the school caretaker. She went on to serve as chair of governors from 2007 to 2009.
In 2006, during my final year as president of ADPH, I approached Nicola to help organise our annual conference. Under her leadership, ADPH grew into a highly successful organisation for directors of public health, who Nicola always fiercely defended, often quietly and without seeking credit.
Her marriage to Roger ended in divorce in 2010. She is survived by four children, George and Heather from her first marriage, and Luke and David from her second, seven grandchildren and a brother, Douglas.
