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Organisers

Andrew Bennett

Andrew is the Public Health Lead at the Merseyside Violence Reduction Partnership. The organisation is one of 20 Violence Reduction Units across England and Wales that assesses, implements and evaluates effective ways of tackling serious youth violence.

Andrew has been involved in nightlife related issues for many years participating in local nightlife strategic planning; implementing communication campaigns using social marketing approaches; providingtraining and conducting research.  A former youth worker and drug worker and manager, Andrew established one of the first syringe exchange programmes in the mid-1980s in the UK. He was the Managing Director at HIT, a national agency providing a range of drugs and other public health interventions, from 1994 to 2006. During this time HIT became an internationally respected advocate and provider of consumer-based harm reduction approaches to drug and other health-related behaviours. 

Andrew spoke at the first Club Health conference and has attended many more. Along with host city colleagues, he has organised recent Club Health conferences in Prague, San Francisco, Lisbon, Dublin and Amsterdam. 

 

Jo Cox-Brown

Jo is the Founding Director of Night Time Economy Solutions (NTES) the Global Leaders in Night Time Economy Management and is an Expert on the UK High Streets Task Force. She has a wealth of experience working with businesses, communities and local governments to transform their high streets at night. She’s worked in the industry for over 15 years in roles such as CEO of a charity created to turn Nottingham’s nightlife around and the night-time economy manager for Manchester City Centre.

In 2022 her work was globally recognised as NTES won a Music Cities Award for the Best Night Time Economy Initiative. She’s delivered over 20 night time economy and women’s safety strategies in for large cities and small towns such as Nottingham, Manchester, Exeter, Southampton, Bristol, Torquay, Newark and Sherwood and London Boroughs such as Hammersmith and Fulham and Kingston. She has worked with organisations such as the UK Home Office, Local Government Association (LGA), MOPAC and the GLA to review the impact of policies such as the Late Night Levy.

She is a member of the Institute of Licensing (IOL), Institute of Place Management (IPM), Association of Town Centre Managers (ATCM), Association for Electronic Music Venues (AFEM). Her team have supported over 6,000 businesses in 40 towns and cities to adhere to legislation and guidelines through webinars, policies, accreditation, strategies, risk assessments and training. She’s also led large-scale strategy projects for clients such as McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wake the Tiger and Boomtown Festival.

Zara Quigg

Zara is a Professor in Behavioural Epidemiology at the Public Health Institute (PHI), Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom. As head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Violence Prevention at PHI, she works with WHO to promote and support a public health approach to violence prevention at local, national and international level. She has worked on nightlife-related research for 20 years, examining risky alcohol consumption (including preloading) and associated harms (e.g. violence).

Zara’s research has informed the development of prevention activity across various UK and European nightlife settings, including: the development of nightlife worker bystander training on identifying and preventing sexual violence (e.g. STOP-SV; Good Night Out Campaign); and implementation of community based multi-component approaches (i.e. STAD In Europe; Drink Less Enjoy More) to preventing excessive alcohol consumption across public and private drinking settings. Zara is from Liverpool and works with local communities and organisations to promote healthy nightlife in Liverpool’s night-time economy. She sits on various local and national steering groups relating to nightlife health and is active in engaging with nightlife users to ensure their voice informs policy and practice.

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