InterestsPat Gordon has extensive experience of service development and project management in health and social care. She directed the King’s Fund Primary Healthcare Development Programme and has published widely on community-based health services.
She co-directed a major action research programme, the London & Northern Health Partnerships, which was focused on the well-being of older people and charged with finding new ways of using development money to impact on mainstream services. This resulted in the development of an approach to inter-agency working and citizen participation, Whole System Working, that Pat and her colleagues Diane Plamping and Julian Pratt continue to develop and deploy. The approach draws on metaphors of living systems and complex adaptive systems.
In 1999 they moved as visiting research associates to the Dept of Operational Research and Decision Sciences at the LSE to develop their connection with the practice of problem structuring methods. They also set up a consultancy that applies whole system working in contexts across the public sector. They have published widely on the practice and theory of working whole systems.
Pat was educated at Glasgow University and the London School of Economics. She has worked in research and development in both the NHS and the voluntary sector. She is a non-executive director of the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust, a board member of Islington Health Partnership, and Chair of Governors of Acland Burghley School.
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