Tackling health inequalities: the West Yorkshire Mayor’s big ideas challenge

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What is the Mayor’s big ideas challenge?

Tackling health inequalities: the Mayor’s big ideas challenge is a £1 million challenge funded by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to accelerate innovative solutions, products, or services to overcome health inequalities among communities in West Yorkshire.

This is a unique opportunity tailored to support West Yorkshire SMEs to accelerate their solutions by providing:

Twenty £20,000 development grants for selected finalists
Three £100,000 final awards for continued development and commercialisation of solutions
Access to Nexus’s (University of Leeds) non-resident membership programme, providing not just access to a range of experts and support, but also access to its facilities
Opportunities to connect and become part of a cohort of like-minded innovators through our events, activities and shared platforms
Access to a package of support tailored to finalists’ needs for commercialisation, covering topics such as human-centered design, partnerships, commercialisation, investment readiness and more.

We sought entries for a wide range of solutions. As health inequalities stem from various factors, the challenge invites solutions that tackle issues across different domains, including food, the environment, community engagement, and healthcare access.

Moreover, we were looking to catalyse innovations that were already in development at point of entry and will be ready to commercialise by the end of the programme.

The challenge is now closed for entries. Finalists will be announced in July 2025.

Find out more

The Judges

Meet the judges for tackling health inequalities: the Mayor’s big ideas challenge. They’re tasked with selecting the finalists, then later, the winning innovators with solutions, products, or services to overcome health inequalities among communities in West Yorkshire.

Sarah Bowes

An experienced policy and strategy professional with a strong track record in public sector economic development, Sarah is currently Head of Business at the West Yorkshire Combined Authority. Her expertise spans policy and strategy development and implementation for a range of public sector and political organisations across West Yorkshire.

Chris Herbert

Chris is Director of Operations (Research and Innovation) at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and has over 20 years’ experience supporting the development and commercialisation of a wide range of Life Science and Healthtech innovations. Chris is passionate about collaboration and open innovation in developing solutions to real-world challenges alongside the business and reimbursement strategies that underpin investable propositions, which drive economic growth.

Amy Lochtie

Amy is currently the Director of the West Yorkshire ICB Innovation Hub – a collaboration between West Yorkshire ICB and Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber. Amy is passionate about the use of innovation to tackle some of the biggest health challenges facing the population of West Yorkshire. Amy is a registered Nurse with clinical specialties in both Adult and Neonatal Intensive Care, a bestselling author in healthcare leadership and a national thought leader in nursing and innovation. Amy will take part as a judge when we are selecting the three winners from the finalists. During the selection of the finalists a representative from Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber will take part in the judging panel.

Lisa-Dionne Morris

Lisa-Dionne is Professor of Public & Industry Understanding of Capability Driven Design at the University of Leeds. A leader in user-centred design and inclusive innovation, she pioneered the “Capability Plus” model. Founder of the Black Female Academics’ Network, she champions equity in academia and industry and was Winner in the PRECIOUS Awards’ Outstanding Woman in STEM category.

Gary Stott

Gary has spent over 30 years in the social impact field. He began his career helping to tackle homelessness becoming the Chief Executive of a regional homelessness charity. Since then he has worked with government programmes to improve homelessness outcomes for many people and founded social enterprises supporting some of the UK’s most marginalised communities. He also founded an advisory business, supporting public sector bodies, businesses and high net worth individuals on their social impact activity and analysis. Gary joined CSG 11 years ago to bring this experience to the field of food surplus and food insecurity, and through his extensive research and experience, Community Shop was born. He is on the trustee board of a number of charities and chairs regional food insecurity boards as well as advising organisations around the world on the social supermarket model.