RCPCH’s Russell Viner: “The NHS does not prioritise children’s health”

“Sitting in a room hearing about a new strategy and waiting for children to be mentioned—and then them not being mentioned,” is my biggest frustration, Russell Viner tells me. It is the thing he would most like to change in his new role as president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH).

Softly spoken, with a barely perceptible Australian twang (he has been in the UK for a quarter of a century; “I think I may be the first overseas trained president of the college”), he talks of his role in two halves: one, for his paediatrician members and, two, for the children and young people they doctor.

“As far as I know, no other college is named for the area, the client group… colleges tend to be named for the surgeons or physicians,” Viner says. “So we’re both a membership organisation and the leading voice for children and young people’s health in the UK.”

This split is reflected in his early priorities for his tenure, which began on 15 March; the two things he would most like to see within his first year are “a definite turn up in our ST1 fill rates” and “seeing children’s health strategies in Scotland and Wales come to fruition, and England committing to that.”