GP’s Devotion to the Health of Homeless People is Recognised with University of Leicester Award
By Community Correspondent
A Leicester GP who has devoted much of his professional life to improving the health of homeless people has been honoured by his hometown university.
Dr Nigel Hewett OBE’s tireless work for those living on the streets has been recognised with an honorary Doctorate of Science award from the University of Leicester, which he accepted at a graduation ceremony held at De Montfort Hall today (Thursday 17 July).
“As a proud lifelong Leicester resident, I am honoured and delighted to receive this honorary degree,” said Dr Hewett.
“Leicester has an outstanding primary health care service for people experiencing homelessness and asylum seekers. We should be proud to be national leaders in this field and this humbling award is a recognition of multidisciplinary team work over the decades.
Dr Hewett has worked with homeless people since 1990.
In 2000, he set up the full-time Leicester Homeless Primary Healthcare Service; this is now Inclusion Healthcare, a community interest company judged “outstanding” by the Care Quality Commission.
In 2006, he was awarded an OBE for services to homeless people.
In 2009, Dr Hewett launched University College London Hospital’s Pathway homelessness team.
In 2010, he was a founder member of the Faculty for Homeless and Inclusion Health and became Medical Director of Pathway – a charity formed to improve the healthcare of homeless people and other excluded groups and support the faculty.
There are now 14 Pathway-style hospital care co-ordination teams from Bradford to Brighton, in England, and also in Perth, Australia.
In 2018, Dr Hewett edited the third edition of the Faculty Standards for Homeless and Inclusion Health, which has been endorsed by a range of Royal Colleges.
The Faculty has grown to a network of over 1,300 people, passionate about improving the health of excluded groups, particularly homeless people, Gypsies and Travellers, sex workers and vulnerable migrants.
Members are drawn from all professions and include people with a lived experience of homelessness and other exclusions. They come together to step outside professional siloes and work collaboratively.
A life-long Leicester resident, Dr Hewett went to Beauchamp Comprehensive, Oadby, and completed three years of postgraduate vocational training to be a GP in Leicester.
After qualifying as a GP, he worked with his wife Frances for two years in the Amazon jungle of Northern Peru, providing training and support for ‘barefoot doctors’ of the Aguaruna and Huambisa tribes.
Dr Hewett also lectured to the University of Leicester’s medical students annually about health inequalities and health care provision for excluded groups.
University President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nishan Canagarajah, said: “Dr Hewett’s commitment to helping some of the most vulnerable people in our society is quite something to behold. He’s devoted more than three decades to improving the health of homeless people, alongside his ‘day job’ as a GP.
“The world needs more people like Dr Hewett, who is a true Citizen of Change, and I hope his story will inspire our students, and those in the wider community, to consider what they can do to improve the lives of others.”
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