Rita Araújo is Head of Children’s Commissioning and Transformation at NHS Surrey and Sussex Integrated Care Board, where she leads system wide work to improve population health outcomes for children, young people and families.

A registered Nurse with over 20 years’ experience, Rita has worked across frontline clinical care, Quality Improvement programme management and senior commissioning roles across the NHS, Local Authorities and applied health research partnerships. She is also an invited lecturer in improvement science and system transformation.

Her work focuses on translating population health approaches into practical delivery, bringing together partners across health, local authority, education and the voluntary sector to create more equitable and sustainable systems. She specialises in designing and delivering integrated, data driven models that address health inequalities, strengthen early intervention and support prevention across acute, community and social care.

Rita has led large scale transformation programmes with measurable impact on outcomes, access and value for money, including improvements in access, waiting times and system efficiency. Her work has been recognised nationally, with multiple awards including the Health Service Journal and Local Government Chronicle awards, and internationally, with her models replicated across other settings and presented at multiple conferences.

Originally from Portugal, Rita brings an international perspective to system transformation and has contributed to work with the World Health Organisation on child rights in healthcare. She is also a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Knowledge Mobilisation Fellow, focused on accelerating the use of evidence to improve population health.