Speaker

UKIHCA is delighted to welcome Lee Vaughan as UKIHCA’s first Strategic Advisor for the Patient/Client Voice.

As the leading professional body for Whole-Health and Wellbeing Coaching, UKIHCA is committed to advancing patient-centred care, and Lee’s appointment marks an important milestone in integrating and strengthen the voice of patients and clients at the heart of our work.

With his lived experience and professional insight, Lee will play a vital role in ensuring that the perspectives of those receiving care and coaching are heard, valued, and embedded into UKIHCA’s strategy, policy, and practice. This appointment reinforces our mission to champion a truly collaborative and person-centred approach to whole-health and wellbeing coaching.

Lee has lived with persistent (long-term) pain for over three decades. In March 2022 he had resigned his employment, had been off work for almost three months, was in horrendous pain and taking a cocktail of 28 tablets each day. He felt that life as he had known it was over.

His attendance on a pain management programme in Sheffield at this time was to transform his way of thinking, his understanding of pain and ultimately his future.

Learning about health coaching styles from the clinicians at the pain management programme, Lee was able to become curious about the mind-body connection in the experience of pain and began to take responsibility for his own recovery.

His desire to see greater support for those living with persistent pain led him into becoming an advocate. With the development of a Facebook Group, and later a patient designed website called “Partnering Pain”, he has now created multiple resources for people to engage with.

Lee did eventually return to work, and he also tapered most of his medication during a testing 18-month period. However, as his clarity of mind improved in line with his reduction in pain levels, he was soon giving interviews on local radio stations and for national press.

Locally in Sheffield, with funding from Sport England he established numerous ‘movement’ programs for those living with persistent pain. One of the programs was nominated for the Sheffield Move More Awards and is still running in 2025, with funding in place for it to continue.

Lee’s value soon became recognised by organisations like Peak Health Coaching, Flippin Pain, Pain Concern, NHS and later Pure Unity Health.

Lee now works as a Lived Experience and Long-Term Conditions Service Lead, a Health Coach and as a Pain Educator – powerfully using the very thing that held him back for over three decades as his greatest skill.