Fiona Loud has been Policy Director of the British Kidney Patient Association, the leading grant-giving charity supporting kidney patients in the UK, since 2013. She spent the previous 7 years as Director (previously Chair) of the Kidney Alliance, an umbrella organisation that brought together the main patient and professional charities in kidney care.
She led and co-authored Kidney Health: Delivering Excellence, a kidney community review of kidney care 10 years after the National Service Framework was first launched. This work, with its ambitions for excellence in care from a patient and professional viewpoint, is supported by the Kidney Health Partnership of 7 key UK kidney charities. Fiona co-chairs the partnership.
She is lay chair of the local Organ Donation Committee for West Hertfordshire Hospital Trust and a member of the NHS England Clinical Reference Group for dialysis. She works to promote kidney health and awareness wherever possible, and uses her own experience of kidney disease to inform her work. She chairs the UK Renal Registry Patient Council.
Fiona has been on a number of NICE Development and Topic Expert Groups including Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Quality Standards, Acute Kidney Injury and CKD Guidelines. She is a member of the NHS England Acute Kidney Injury board, and co-chair of its risk workstream.
In 2015 she became a Fellow of the British Renal Society and was one of the inaugural Health Service Journal top 50 patient leaders.
Fiona spent 5 years on dialysis after her kidneys failed before receiving a transplant from her husband in late 2006. She has a degree in English from the University of Southampton.