Jenny Harries
English physician
Dame Jennifer Margaret Harries is a retired British public health physician and civil servant. She was the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency and head of NHS Test and Trace from May 2021 until June 2025. She was previously a regional director at Public Health England, and then Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England from June 2019 until her UKHSA appointment in 2021.
Early life and education
Born in Monmouth, Harries studied medicine at the University of Birmingham, gaining an intercalated BSc in pharmacology in 1981 and medical degrees, MB ChB, in 1984.
Career
Harries was Regional Director for the South of England for Public Health England from February 2013 before being appointed Deputy Chief Medical officer for England in June 2019. The appointment of a new Chief Medical Officer for England, Chris Whitty, was announced simultaneously.
Effective 7 May 2021, Harries was appointed as the first chief executive of the new UK Health Security Agency, which combines Public Health England and England's NHS Test and Trace. Although the organisation was established on 1 April 2021, Harries assumed this role following a hand-over period which lasted until Dido Harding, the interim chief executive, departed on 7 May 2021.
She retired from the civil service on 31 May 2025. In November 2025, Harries was installed as the Chancellor of the University of Chester.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jenny Harries” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.