DAME ELIZABETH ANIONWU
PROFESSOR OF NURSING
Dame Elizabeth Anionwu is an Emeritus Professor of Nursing at the University of West London, and she is also a Patron of the Sickle Cell Society. Born in Birmingham in 1947 she was placed in a Catholic children’s home, shortly after her birth. A few years later, she went to live with her maternal Grandparents. Due to experiencing exceptional care in childhood from a nurse, she decided very early on that this was the path she wanted to follow.
At the age of 16, she began working for the NHS as a school nurse assistant and over the next 16 years, Dame Elizabeth worked as a Nurse, Health visitor and teacher in areas with significant Black and Brown communities. In 1979 she became the first Sickle Cell Nurse Practitioner in the country helping to establish, in Brent, the first nurse-led UK Sickle & Thalassaemia Screening and Counselling Centre.
In 1988 Dame Elizabeth was awarded a PhD from the Institute of Education, University College London (UCL), in 2001 she was awarded a CBE for services to Nursing. In 2004 she was presented with a Fellowship of the Royal College of Nursing (FRCN) for her work in the development of nurse-led sickle cell and thalassaemia counselling services and education and leadership in transcultural nursing.
In 2017 she was honoured with a Damehood for services to nursing and the Mary Seacole Statue Appeal and the Queen’s Nursing Institute awarded her a Fellowship. Her memoirs Dreams From My Mother were published in 2021.
“I’ve used my anger in a very positive way by channelling the energy of that anger into working with other campaigns. For example, the sickle cell campaigns, the campaign for statue of Mary Seacole, always with others, of course and now, I can see that it was so helpful, that I channelled my anger in that way, rather than allowing it to eat me up.”
