Appointment(s)
Director of Centre for Sustainable Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore
Degree(s)
Bachelor of Surgery, The University of Western Australia
Bachelor of Medicine, The University of Western Australia
Bachelor of Medical Science (Honours), Population Health, The University of Western Australia
MA Philosophy, Politics and Economics (First Class), University College London
Biography
Professor Nick Watts is the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Medicine at the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, where he leads the Centre’s mission of shaping the emergent field of sustainable medicine, in Singapore and across the world. His expertise extends to developing Net Zero Healthcare Systems, a crucial aspect of sustainable medicine. Professor Watts is a medical doctor, having previously worked at the forefront of health and climate change with The Lancet, the World Health Organization, and the Royal Medical and Nursing Colleges of the United Kingdom.
Nick comes to the Centre from his role as Chief Sustainability Officer of the NHS in the United Kingdom. There, he was responsible for leading the national delivery team and the NHS Sustainability Board towards their ambition to become the first net zero health system in the world. During his tenure, he oversaw the establishment and significant expansion of the national programme and the embedding of its work in to national healthcare legislation.
Prior to this, Nick worked as the Executive Director of the Lancet Commission and later, the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change. There, he built a multi-centre research collaboration across 51 academic institutions and UN agencies, dedicated to tracking progress on health and climate change.
Professor Watts trained in medicine and public policy at University College London and the University of Western Australia, is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians’ Faculty of Public Health, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Notre Dame and at Monash University. He founded both the Global Climate and Health Alliance and the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, which are dedicated to strengthening the health profession’s voice in the response to climate change.
