Dr Karen Hunte

Karen’s areas of interest are workforce planning and strategy, together with promoting healthcare equity, advocating for equitable access, care and outcomes for patients and workforces. Karen has worked with BME Staff networks across the public sector and in the NHS has supported developmental work on tackling race and disability inequality, together with devising approaches to monitoring and evaluation.

At NHS England (NHSE) Karen led programmes in Workforce Planning, EDI Policy Regulation, and Healthcare Inequalities. As the Digital Inclusion Lead, Karen co-produced the NHSE Digital Inclusion Framework and led its nationwide dissemination. Karen also piloted initiatives to better accommodate disability workforces. When an elected councillor, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) commended Karen’s strong effective leadership for leading a local authority from a zero, to three out of four, star-rating within a year.

Karen has a particular interest in the historicism of healthcare exclusion and its removal, and has researched Strategic Workforce Planning (Healthcare), Social Political Science, International Conflict, and Atlantic History. 

Karen welcomes the recent NHS move towards digital, community and prevention and believes that this game-changer must also ensure new approaches to preventing pay inequality, tackling the existing ethnicity pay gap and driving down attrition linked to racism and discrimination.