Dr Layla McCay

Dr Layla McCay is Director of Policy at the NHS Confederation. She has a medical degree from the University of Glasgow, trained as a psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and later sat on the Trust Board. She has worked nationally at Bupa and at the Department of Health and Social Care; and internationally, including at the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, and several global NGOs . She has held academic roles at Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Hong Kong University, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and at TED, and she founded a think tank that established urban design for mental health in mainstream international policy. Layla was recognized on the Outstanding 100 LGBTQ+ Executives Role Model List 2023 and appears regularly in the media such as BBC Question Time and Newsnight. She has written two books, Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Breaking the Rainbow Ceiling: How LGBTQ+ people can thrive and succeed at work (Bloomsbury, 2024).