Meet The Regional Team

Tom Watkins - East of England Regional Lead Thriving Communities Programme

Tom leads the Thriving Communities programme in the East of England. We have a regional offer aimed at helping anyone that is interested in developing Social Prescribing, to share learning, ideas and best practise especially our vibrant voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector. As a former Link Worker Tom brings almost a decade of experience in Social Prescribing to the programme. He's passionate about supporting our community ecosystem and enabling grassroots organisations to be well placed to attract funding opportunities. Relationships are very important to Tom, who ensures the programme is committed to developing lasting partnerships, creating a stronger sector for social prescribing to take root, enabling communities to thrive. Tom works with social prescribing leaders and organisations delivering social prescribing in their local communities across the East of England to maximise the delivery of care that matters for each person. Outside of Communities 1st Tom is an active volunteer, a presenter on local radio and a regular performer in a local history walk. He also coaches Gymnastics and is a trained actor.

Alan Nicholls - Money & Pensions Service Regional Partnership Manager

Alan has extensive experience in the financial sector, having worked at Lloyds Banking Group for 14 years influencing their financial inclusion, financial education, credit union and University multi-brand strategies. To contact, Alan, please visit the Money and Pensions Services webpage. 

Giles Merritt - Regional Health and Environment Lead for the East of England

Green social prescribing is a new area of work for Natural England (NE) and Giles is excited to be working closely with the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP), and other partners to make a real difference to people’s lives and share the benefits and joys of the natural world with them.

There are three main aims of his work at Natural England and this includes:

1. Continue to support and grow green social prescribing (GSP) so that opportunities to access the health benefits of nature can be increased across the east of England.
2. Expand the role that GSP plays in addressing inequalities.
3. Link up with other areas of work we, and other partners are doing to help the natural world recover, whilst benefitting people’s mental and physical health through nature.

Dustin Pham - Impact Evaluation Facilitator

Dustin graduated from medical school in Vietnam. He is now an MSc student in Integrative Health and Wellbeing at the University of Westminster. He is passionate about volunteering as well as improving community health and he believes Social Prescribing is a massively impactful initiative that is making a real difference to public health. In the Thriving Communities team, Dustin works as our Impact Evaluation Facilitator, liaising between the community services providers and the healthcare professionals, helping to collate data and evidence, and assisting organisations to articulate clinical effectiveness in their project outcome measures.
In his spare time, Dustin enjoys reading, playing guitar, and traveling