Chief Executive – Jennifer Welsh
Jennifer Welsh took up post as Chief Executive of the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in October 2025.
Jennifer Welsh is former Chief Executive of the Northern Health and Social Care Trust and prior to that, she has over 25 years’ experience as a Director within Northern Ireland’s Health & Social Care Service. Jennifer has significant experience in strategy, operations, performance and capital development as well as a strong track record on safety, quality and governance.
Jennifer is currently the Senior Responsible Owner of two of Northern Ireland’s major capital investment programmes, namely the Evolve (HSC Digital) programme and the NIPIMS (NI Pathology Information Management Systems) Programme. She is also Chair of the Council for the Leadership Centre & Clinical Education Centre, and Chair of the Enhanced Care Provider Collaborative.
Jennifer has a strong background in research, prior to her health and social care career, developing partnerships between academia and clinical service, and has retained an interest in the benefits that this, as well as innovation and quality improvement, can bring to people.
Jennifer has also been responsible for developing organisational approaches to partnership and engagement with statutory agencies, the community and voluntary sector, and with service users and carers.
Chairman – Professor Elborne
Professor Stuart Elborn took up post as Non-Executive Chair to Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in March 2026.
Professor Elborn is a leading clinical academic with more than four decades of experience spanning healthcare delivery, higher education, medical research and senior leadership. His career includes senior clinical and academic roles at Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Imperial College London and the Royal Brompton Hospital. He led major clinical services in Respiratory Medicine and clinical trials in the development of transformative therapies now benefiting people living with cystic fibrosis and other chronic respiratory diseases. His work has shaped evidence-based clinical guidelines for the management of cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis.
Professor Elborn has driven strategic transformation initiatives to strengthen clinical and research and innovation infrastructure and has consistently championed interdisciplinary collaboration between clinicians, scientists and industry. He also brings significant governance and regulatory experience through his work with the Regulatory and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA), advocating for safe, high-quality, evidence-informed care.
Having retired from his substantive university roles in 2024, Professor Elborn now holds a number of non-executive positions, including with RQIA, Northern Ireland’s healthcare regulator, LifeArc, a foundation supporting translational research in rare diseases and QUBIS, Queen’s University Belfast’s technology transfer company. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and serves as the Academy’s Northern Ireland Champion, supporting excellence in biomedical and healthcare and research.
Professor Elborn was awarded a CBE in 2013 for services to healthcare in Northern Ireland and received the British Thoracic Society Medal in 2024 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to respiratory medicine.