Laura joined NHS GG&C in 2003; initially supporting administration of the West of Scotland Medical Training programme for Paediatrics. Inspired by the principles of releasing clinical time to care, by improving the processes and systems which underpin the care, she went on to provide programme support to dental services, long term conditions, community wards and corporate governance programmes within NHS Ayrshire & Arran. In 2010, she became a member of Scotland’s Children’s Panel and started studying for an MBA with University West of Scotland; graduating in 2012. Programme management skills were developed through a 30-month outbound secondment from NHS A&A to SQA to support implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence, where she also learned more about the role of policy in the systemic inequalities, in both health and education, impacting Scotland’s children and families.
In 2015, Laura joined (Public) Health Scotland where she qualified as PRINCE2 Practitioner and EFQM Assessor and started studying Master’s in Public Health with University of Glasgow. As Content Manager for the redesign of Ready Steady Baby, a resource given to all pregnant people in Scotland at midwifery booking appointment, she negotiated cross-sector, cross-policy, consensus on the best balance of evidence-based clinical and public health guidance to include. The redesigned resource received Ministerial Launch in 2018 and Laura moved to the PHS Screening team to support national evaluative roll-out of Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) in Scotland, in collaboration with strategic partners from NES and NSS. In March 2020, she was delighted to join NSS as Programme Manager for Scotland’s new National Maternity Network. She graduated with MPH in 2022 and is now dual qualified at Master’s level in business and public health. Her dissertation was an impact assessment of regional variation in access to emergency early pregnancy care in Scotland. Laura said “I’m passionate about all things early intervention, prevention and reducing inequalities and look forward to working together to build a truly person-centred Network for Scottish women and families”.