Kevin Andrew Fenton FFPH is director of health and wellbeing at Public Health England.
Background
Fenton was born in Glasgow, Scotland to Sydney and Carmen Fenton. He grew up in Jamaica, where his father was head of the science department at Excelsior High School and his mother was a nurse at the hospital of the University of the West Indies.
Education
Fenton himself attended UWI, first as a computer science major but later he graduated with an Doctor of Medicine from the UWI Medical School, where he was elected class president for the 1985-1986 school year. He completed residencies at Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay and University College Hospital in Kingston.
Career
He was formerly director of the United States National Center for Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Viral Hepatitis, Doctor of Sacred Theology, and Tuberculosis Prevention, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Working as a government doctor in Lucea, Jamaica caused Fenton to concentrate on public health. He earned an Master in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 1992 and a doctorate in epidemiology from University College London.
Fenton became a senior lecturer on Human Immunodeficiency Virus epidemiology and honorary consultant epidemiologist at the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre of the United Kingdom"s National Health Service and a lead researcher on the second National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles in 2000 and 2001.
In 2002 he became director of the Centre"s Health Protection Agency Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Sexually Transmitted Infections Department. Fenton joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2005, initially as director of the National Syphilis Elimination Effort, then director of the National Center for Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Doctor of Sacred Theology, and Tuberculosis Prevention, renamed the National Center for Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Viral Hepatitis, Doctor of Sacred Theology, and Tuberculosis Prevention in 2007.
In 2011 and 2012, Fenton appeared on The Root"s "The Root 100" list of "black achievers and influencers between the ages of 25 and 45". Fenton left Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States of America, in 2012 to join the new English national public health body, Public Health England, as head of its directorate of health improvement and population healthcare, renamed health and wellbeing shortly before April 2013"s official commencement of the organisation.
As of 2015, Fenton was paid a salary of between £175,000 and £179,999 by the department, making him one of the 328 most highly paid people in the British public sector at that time.
Fenton is openly gay.