LONDON — Weber Shandwick has strengthened its healthcare team, bringing two senior advertising agency execs into the London and EMEA team in newly-created strategic and creative roles.

Jo Crouch (pictured, left) joins the agency as managing director of strategic planning, while Khalid Latif (second left) becomes creative director of health for EMEA.

Latif joins from Publicis Lifebrands and has also worked at Grey and DDB. He will play a lead creative role on some of Weber Shandwick’s biggest health clients in the region, reporting to Rachael Paye, EMEA health MD (pictured, right), and James Nester, EMEA executive creative director.

Crouch brings nearly 20 years’ health and wellness experience from in-house roles, including marketing manager at Roche Diagnostics, and previous advertising agencies DDB Health, VCCP Health and McCann Health.

In her new role, she will develop and implement health strategy as well as delivering brand and multichannel communications plans at all stages of the product lifecycle for global pharmaceutical companies. She will report into Lisa Henry, managing director of London Health (pictured, second right).

Henry said: “We’re delighted to welcome both Jo and Khalid into our thriving and ambitious team. We’ve always striven to deliver bold, creative and impactful campaigns and we’re confident both Jo and Khalid will help us push the boundaries of our work even further.”

Weber Shandwick London MD Helen Bennett told the Holmes Report that the new roles had been created in response to “increasing demand for insight-led creative in healthcare space and our ambition to continue to develop a best-in-class, fully-integrated pharma offer.”

She added: “We continue to see impressive and sustained growth across our healthcare portfolio in London. The arrival of Jo and Khalid is especially exciting as we are at our very best when we combine data-led insight with powerful ideas. We are confident they will make great additions to a team already delivering innovative and high value solutions for a wide range of healthcare clients.”