Louise Harrington
Louise Harrington is a senior public health and system transformation leader with over 20 years' experience designing, commissioning, delivering and evaluating services that improve outcomes for babies, children and young people, particularly those from underserved communities or experiencing disadvantage. Louise is adept at translating complex programmes into scalable offers and opportunities, including partnership development, proposals and system alignment.
She works within a local authority public health team as Public Health Principal for Maternity, Babies, Children and Young People, providing strategic leadership across the local system. Louise also works as an Associate with Better Start, building relationships with local authorities and strategic partners and connecting them with Better Start's learning, evidence and experience to inform their own early-years ambitions. Previously, as Interim Head of Health Inequalities within an Integrated Care Partnership in a London borough, Louise led the strategic development and implementation of a cross-system programme to address inequalities affecting babies, children and young people, working closely with NHS Trusts, ICB, local authority, VCFSE organisations and local communities. This means Louise brings current, hands-on experience of the realities facing public services, including system pressures, workforce challenges, funding constraints and the complexity of working across organisations, ensuring her work is grounded in what is practical, achievable and effective in real-world settings.
At the NSPCC she led development, testing, evaluation and adoption of evidence-informed interventions to prevent child maltreatment across the UK, including programmes focused on improving perinatal mental health, infant mental health and parent infant relationships, and children and young people's mental health.
Louise brings nationally recognised expertise in co-production, evaluation and service design with skill in test-and-learn approaches and systems building. She was an Evaluation Advisor to Sure Start Local Programmes within the National Evaluation of Sure Start, supporting evidence-based policy and practice nationwide. As Evaluation Lead for the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (Better Start), she developed a 'proving and improving' evaluation framework for one of the UK's most ambitious early years system change programmes.
She holds an MSc in Applied Health Research and applies a rigorous, evidence-informed approach to all her work. Louise has published in peer-reviewed journals and contributes to national advisory groups focused on early intervention, mental health prevention and children's wellbeing.