Professor Kelechi Nnoaham MBBS MSc DTM&H MPH DPhil FFPH FACHE
Kelechi currently leads a centre of excellence on health programmes development in Shell plc focused on enabling the business, its people and communities to thrive in the energy transition.
Kelechi qualified with a medical degree from Nigeria in 1999, practiced clinical infectious diseases and general medicine in West Africa before going on to complete with Distinctions studies in public health at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and global health at University of Oxford. His PhD from Oxford University in 2011 was based on a multicentre global study spanning public health, epidemiology and women’s health. His research culminated in a number of highly cited publications, with the main publication highlighted by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in 2019 as one of 25 most influential papers in its 75-year history.
Kelechi has in the last 15 years held a variety of senior Public Health positions in the NHS, and Local Government and the private sector as well as honorary professorships in Public Health & Epidemiology with Plymouth University (2015-2022) and Cardiff University (since 2021).
Before joining Shell in December 2022, Kelechi was Executive Director of Public Health and Lead for Research & Development, Value-Based Health and Innovation in Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board between from November 2016. In that role, he pioneered a transformative approach to the use of integrated population data to tackle the underlying drivers of health inequalities and improve population health. He brought a system-wide approach to the population health agenda and primed the health and care system’s institutions to strengthen their partnerships, including leading the articulation of a clear agenda around population health research, culminating in a recent significant NIHR Health Determinants Research Collaborative award to the partnership to tackle health inequalities.
Kelechi lives in Talygarn in South Wales with his wife Theodora, a medical laboratory assistant with Royal Glamorgan Hospital, and two young children – an 8y-yr old boy and a 5-yr old girl.