MedicsVoices

Hamish Wilson is a GP and nearly retired Associate Professor at Otago Medical School, Dunedin, NZ. From 1996, he taught in the Diploma/Masters programme for GPs, leading the the ‘nature’ or philosophy paper. From 2008, he introduced undergraduate medical students to community-based, experiential learning and reflective practice. He is a qualified Balint Group leader and co-leads the reflective essay competition for medical students in Australasia. With Wayne Cunningham, he published ‘Being a Doctor: Understanding Medical Practice’ (2013) that explored some of the clinical challenges for GPs and other clinicians. He is now writing a second book on emerging approaches to functional illness or persistent physical symptoms.

Robert F Woollard is Emeritus Professor of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia. He has extensive national and international experience in the fields of medical education, social accountability of medical schools, ecosystem approaches to health, and sustainable development.In this he has or is holding leadership roles in the CFPC, CMA, AFMC, AMEE, and The Network TUFH. He is actively involved in Nepal with a national medical school, school of public health and a nursing school founded on the principles of social accountability established through his initial feasibility study. He Chairs the International Advisory Board (IAB) for the newly established University of Nepal (Dec. 2024) a new public liberal arts university. His work in East Africa and Asia is centered on matters of social accountability, primary care, rural health and accreditation systems.Dr. Woollard co-chairs the Global Consensus on Social Accountability for Medical Schools (GCSA) and does extensive work in this area with many international bodies. He was a lead organizer for the World Summit on Social Accountability that led to the Tunis Declaration  and recently chaired the Scientific Committee for TUFH2022 the annual conference  of this network devoted to social justice and health, leading to the declaration https://thenetworktufh.org/tufh-2022- declaration/He has engaged in a range of grant supported work including the establishment of CoPEH-Canada and the five year ECHO project on watershed scale integration of environmental, community and health. As an Associate Director of the Rural Coordination Centre of BC (RCCbc) he provided central leadership in the development of a Canadian national strategy for addressing educational and service needs for surgical and obstetrical services in rural Canada in particular Aboriginal service access for birthing. And, has worked in many areas to reduce racism in BC’s health system. Above all he is a husband, father, and grandfather.

General Practitioner, clinical trialist, and listener, interpreter and teller of stories.A GP by background, Chris Butler is Professor of Primary Care, Director of the University of Oxford Primary Care Clinical Trials Unit, and Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, University of Oxford.His training and experience span the University of Cape Town, Cecilia Makiwane Hospital (Mdantsane), McMaster University, the University of Wales College of Medicine, and the University of Toronto—bringing a global, clinical practice-embedded perspective to the design and delivery of clinical trials.He has led the design and delivery of more than 30 randomised trials, including the 10-country PRUDENCE point-of-care diagnostics trial and the 8-country ECRAID-Prime adaptive platform trial—providing practical insights into designing, governing, and delivering studies across diverse health systems.Chris has helped pioneer pragmatic, “democratised” trial methods, exemplified by the UK National Urgent Public Health trials PRINCIPLE and PANORAMIC. Together, these trials randomised over 40,000 participants and evaluated nine treatments for COVID-19, generating transferable lessons on adaptive design, rapid recruitment, research equity, and evidence generation at scale.He is currently co-leading the EU-funded ECRAID-Prime adaptive platform trial in acute respiratory infections across eight European countries, as well as the SHIELD-1 trial evaluating peginterferon lambda-1a for viral infections.

Tim Stokes is the Elaine Gurr Professor of General Practice at the Department of Primary Care, Otago School of Medicine, based at the Dunedin campus, New Zealand.He is an academic general practitioner with a particular interest in health care delivery and implementation research, using a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. His particular interests are in rural health services and health systems, evaluating complex health system interventions, and new ways of delivering health services for acute and chronic clinical conditions in primary care and across the primary/community – secondary care interface He was a member of NZ’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency (PHARMAC) Pharmacology and Therapeutics Advisory Group (PTAC) from 2016 to 2022. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Primary Health Care, and Past President, Australasian Association for Academic Primary Care (AAAPC)He was previously Senior Clinical Lecturer in Primary Care, University of Birmingham 2013–2014; Consultant Clinical Adviser, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Leicester and Leeds 2006–2013, and Lecturer / Senior Lecturer in General Practice, University of Leicester, UK 1997–2006.

David Loxterkamp’s work as a family physician was the subject of a 1998 Life Magazine photoessay, “What makes a good doctor?” , an NBC Nightline documentary in 2000, and the 2015 PBS documentary “Rx: The Quiet Revolution” by award-winning film-maker David Grubin.David Loxterkamp, M.D. is a family physician who has made his home in Belfast, Maine for the last 41 years, along with his wife, Lindsay. They have two children, Clare and John, who live nearby. His stories and essays have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, and the Annals of Family Medicine. He has authored A Measure of My Days: The Journal of a Country Doctor (University of New England Press, 1997) and What Matters in Medicine: Lessons from a Life in Primary Care (University of Michigan Press, 2013), and has contributed to several anthologies, including including A Life in Medicine, edited by Robert Coles and Randy Testa (The New Press, 2002) and The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader, edited by Therese Zink (Kent State University Press, 2010).David grew up in rural Iowa, attended Creighton University and The University of Iowa College of Medicine, completed his family medicine residency in York, PA ((1982), earned an MA in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago (1984) and a fellowship in Family Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (1994). He is is co-founder of Seaport Community Health Center and its Recovery Program. interests include running, choral music, local history, architecture, and potato farming.

Jim Dickinson is a Family Physician and Professor at the Department of Family Medicien at the University of Calgary. After medical training from Queensland University, Australia, he trained in Family Medicine at McMaster University, Canada, then a Kellogg Fellowship at McGill University in Canada. He returned to Australia and wrote his PhD on Preventive Activities in General Practice, while working in General Practice and as a Fellow at Newcastle University. Subsequently he was the first advisor in General Practice to the Australian Department of Health in Canberra, then held chairs in the University of Western Australia and Chinese University of Hong Kong. He returned to Canada in 2002, and been at the University of Calgary since then, He has had a long-term interest in prevention and screening, and has contributed to provincial and national screening program committees, and was appointed to the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care from 2009 to 2016. He runs the Alberta sentinel practice program for surveillance of respiratory virus disease in the Alberta community, the TARRANT program. He also researches antibiotic use in community practice and writes about health care policy.  

Professor Richard Baker, Emeritus Professor, and First Head of the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Leicester, 2003 – 2010.  He was Director of the NIHR CLAHRC for LNR, 2008 - 2013.Richard is an academic general practitioner with continuing research interests in the effect of primary health care on population mortality. He was a general practitioner first in Cheltenham 1977 to 1992, and then in Leicester City 1992 to 2013. and an academic at Bristol and then Leicester Universities. His past research has focused on the quality of care, and included methods of clinical audit, clinical governance, and guideline development and implementation. He also undertook research into patient experience of general practice, interventions to improve the quality of care, development of guidelines (with NICE), continuity of care and the outcomes of primary health care. He has also undertaken investigations of patterns of mortality.

Professor Ngaire Kerse is the Joyce Cook Chair in Ageing Well and a Professor of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland. She is a practicing GP at the Auckland City Mission. Since 2010 she has been co-principal investigator of a longitudinal study – Life and Living in Advanced Age: a Cohort Study in New Zealand (LiLACs NZ). She was listed in the New Year’s Honours as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. After training in primary care in New Zealand, Australia, and the USA, completing a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD at the University of Melbourne, she has built a programme of research promoting activity and function in residential care, residential care organisational culture and outcomes, promoting physical activity in community dwelling older people, activity for depression in the very old, staying upright (preventing falls and injury) in older people in all settings, improving prescribing in primary care, and a large cohort of Māori and non-Māori in advanced age.

I’m Emilie Couchman, and today I am talking with Professor George Freeman, an academic GP in Southampton for 20 years, then Imperial College London, and part-time in a West London practice until 2010. Now retired from clinical practice, George continues to engage in academic work that aligns with continuity and generalism; in his mind, the two key cornerstones of general practice. “Back in Southampton we academics were all part-timers in a ‘most peculiar practice’. Resulting continuity problems led to my MD thesis on Continuity of Care in General Practice, ongoing international work on continuity and eventually membership of the RCGP Commission on Generalism. Relationship continuity links directly with access, consultation length and patient enablement. Patients and professionals must trade-off seeing the right person against waiting for them. Ongoing NHS challenges, mostly stemming from underfunding general practice, threaten both continuity and generalism.” George is a keen organist, travelling regularly to tickle the ivories of many organs around the world. He has a passion for steam trains, and volunteers at Didcot Railway Centre in Oxfordshire.

Liz Darlinson is a Consultant Nurse and the CEO of Mesothelioma UK, a national charity dedicated to supporting people living with, or supporting those with, mesothelioma and advancing research in this field. In 2004, Liz founded Mesothelioma UK. Mesothelioma UK | Supporting people with this asbestos cancer. She was appointed MBE in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours, and became Deputy Lieutenant for Leicestershire in 2024, in recognition of her professional contributions to the community.She combines over 40 years of hands-on clinical practice with charity management, education, and clinical research to improve patient outcomes and raise public awareness of this rare, devastating disease. A Consultant Nurse in the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, she also holds an Honorary Senior Lecturer position at De Montfort University, the University of Leicester. She is a founding member of the International Thoracic Oncology Nurses Forum, a lifetime honorary member of Lung Cancer Nursing UK, and the first nursing board member of the International Mesothelioma Interest Group.

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh OBE is Nuffield Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences and Head of the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. He is Professorial Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant with the UK Health Security Agency and Public Health Scotland.Aziz was previously Chair of Primary Care Research and Development, Director of the Usher Institute and Dean of Data at the University of Edinburgh. He has played important advisory roles to a number of governments, inter-governmental bodies, including the World Bank, World Health Organization and the World Innovation Summit for Health, and leading scientific bodies including the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society.Aziz has worked for over 20 years on digitising health systems, securely linking health and cross-sectoral data and then using these data to inform and influence health policy, improve the safety and quality of care, and develop personalised risk assessments. He is a fellow of 10 learned societies and he has been awarded numerous UK and international awards for his work. Aziz was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for ‘Services to Medicine and Health Care’ in 2014 and a Knight Bachelor in 2022 for ‘Services to COVID-19 Research and Policy

Professor Philip Evans FRCGP is an academic GP and was for 31 years a GP partner in St Leonard’s Practice, Exeter. He has a long-standing research interest in relational continuity of care in general practice, as well as prediabetes/ type 2 diabetes and more recently primary care genomics.He is currently National Associate Director of Health and Care Research in the NIHR Research Delivery Network (RDN) and was previously the NIHR CRN National Specialty Lead for Primary Care. During the COVID-19 pandemic he was Deputy Chair of the NIHR Urgent Public Health (UPH) Group and has recently led the CRN engagement with the four-nation PRINCIPLE and PANORAMIC studies of community-based treatment of COVID-19. He has over 28 years’ experience of leading primary care research networks, both locally and nationally. For the last four years he has been leading the NIHR CRN Primary care Research Strategy.

Andrew is a GP, educator, and an academic in Oxford.  He has been the Deputy Editor of the British Journal of General Practice since 2022. He co-edited the BMA medical book award-winning Handbook of Primary Care Ethics (CRC press) and BMA Highly Commended Marketization, Health and Ethics (Routledge) in 2018, and has written undergraduate text books on clinical skills, child health as well as ethics and sociology for medical students. He is the co-convenor of the Society of Apothecaries’ diploma examination in philosophy. He volunteers with several local initiatives including the Oxford University Hospitals Ethical Advisory Group and the Magdalen College School medical careers programme. He is the proud father of two amazing little girls and tweets in his own capacity on X and BlueSky as @gentlemedic. 

Minna Johansson is a general practitioner working clinically at Herrestads healthcare centre a healthcare centre in Uddevalla, a small town on the Swedish west coast. She is an Associate Professor at Gothenburg University, director of Cochrane Sustainable Healthcare.She is the lead investigator of the Global Center for Sustainable Healthcare, focused on finding novel ways to make healthcare more sustainable for patients, clinicians, health systems, societies, and for our planet. Minna feels just as passionate about her clinical work as she does about her research. “My goal is to contribute to a more sustainable healthcare through research inspired by the problems me and my patients face in clinical practice.”Her PhD in 2018 was titled "Evaluating benefits and harms of screening - the streetlight effect?". Her research interests include methodological aspects of evaluating benefits and harms of screening when up-to-date data from randomized trials is lacking, informed choice/shared decision making, overdiagnosis/medicalization and how values and context can be integrated in evidence-based medicine.

MaryAnn Ferreux is the Chief Medical Officer for Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex and a Non-Executive Director for Kent and Medway NHS Partnership Trust.She has 20 years clinical experience working across both the Australian and UK health system, with specialist qualifications in health system leadership, management, and population health. She has held Board level roles as a medical leader in both primary and secondary care and is passionate about using digital and innovation to improve the patient experience for underserved communities, deliver better integration, and ensure equitable access to care. She is a thought leader for health equity in innovation and is leading on several projects to explore gender and racial bias in AI, debias policymaking and increase women in leadership for digital and technology. She has a special interest in researching health equity and the impact of the social determinants of health. She is leading several initiatives to promote equity, diversity and inclusion in medicine and is a Trustee and Chair of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh) EDI Committee.

Louise Dubras, Professor Emeritus, led the creation of a new GP focused Graduate Entry Medical School, at Ulster University. She joined Ulster University as Foundation Dean of the new medical school in 2018, developed the curriculum, put together the educational team, and the first cohort of medical students graduated in 2025. During this time she continued to work as a general practitioner one day each week, and immersed herself in the local community. She was born and grew up in Jersey in the Channel Islands. She was lead GP for a homeless service. addiction and mental illness in Southampton where her increasing involvement with the University of Southampton led to her running the medical degree programme. She became Deputy Dean of Medical Education King’s College GKT homas’s medical school in London at a time of huge curriculum change and later became Interim Dean of Medical Education. She was recognised by the award of MBE in the King's Birthday Honours in 2025.

Dr. Viviana Martinez-Bianchi is a distinguished family physician and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. She serves as an Associate Professor and the Director for Community Engagement at Duke University’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. In October 2023, she was elected President-Elect of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) and assumed the presidency on September 20, 2025 until November 2027.

Dr. Christopher Labos is a cardiologist, a course lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University and an affiliate member of the Department of Global and Public Health. He is a columnist with the Montreal Gazette and Medscape, featured on the Sunday Morning House Call on CJAD radio, and has a regular TV segment with CTV Montreal and CBC Morning Live. He blogs and produces a video series called “On Second Thought” for Medscape. He is an associate with the McGill Office of Science and Society and hosts the award-winning podcast “The Body of Evidence.” He is the author of “Does Coffee Cause Cancer?” a story about food epidemiology and why food headlines are usually wrong. He realizes that half of his research findings will be disproved in five years: he just doesn’t know which half. Occasionally, he finds time to practice as a cardiologist so he can buy groceries. To date no one has offered him his own primetime TV show.

Professor Erwin Loh MBBS, LBB(Hons), MBA, MHSM, PhD, FRACMA, FACLM, FAICD is President of the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators. He was most recently National Director of Medical Services for Calvary Health Care. He was previously Group Chief Medical Officer at St Vincent’s Health Australia, Chief Medical Officer at Goulburn Valley Health and Chief Medical Officer of Monash Health. He has qualifications in medicine, law and management. He is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria and High Court of Australia. He has adjunct professorial appointments at Monash University, University of Melbourne and Macquarie University. He has been an invited speaker at local and international conferences, and has published books, book chapters and journal articles on health leadership, health law, clinical governance, AI and health technology. He is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists. He received the Distinguished Fellow Award from RACMA in 2017 for “commitment to governance, research and publication”.

Carolyn Chew-Graham is a General Practitioner and Professor of General Practice Research at Keele University. Her areas of interest and expertise include the primary care (including in prisons) management of people with mental health problems, multiple health conditions and unexplained symptoms, and the mental health and wellbeing of clinicians.Patient and Public Involvement is key to all her research. She chairs the RCGP ‘Research Paper of the Year’ panel. Carolyn was awarded an OBE for services to general practice and primary care research, including research into Long Covid, in the King’s Inaugural Birthday Honours List, June 2023. Carolyn is an NIHR Senior Investigator.

Jeannie Haggerty is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine of McGill University in Montreal and first holder the McGill Research Chair in Family and Community Medicine Research, based at St. Mary’s Hospital Centre. Trained in Epidemiology & Biostatistics, she is a health services researcher whose domain of research is the factors related to continuity, accessibility and quality of primary care. She has developed and validated measures of the patient experience of patient-centered health care, access and continuity, and how these measures relate to changes in organizational and professional practices. In recent years she has focused more particularly on socially vulnerable populations.  She was recognized as 2018 Researcher of the Year by the College of Family Physicians of Canada.She was president of the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG, 2008-2010), the founding Scientific Director of the Quebec Knowledge Network in Integrated Primary Health Care (Réseau-1 Québec 2013-2017), and Scientific Director of the McGill Primary Care Practice Based Research network (2016-2024). She has been active in engaging patients as partners in researcher and quality improvement.

Dr Jean-Frédéric Levesque is the Chief Executive of the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation, and the Deputy Secretary, Clinical Innovation and Research at the NSW Ministry of Health.  Jean-Frédéric is an Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity at the University of New South Wales. He has authored more than 160 peer reviewed publications and his seminal research on healthcare access and inequity has been cited more than 3,000 times.   Jean-Frédéric Levesque has a Medical Degree, a Masters in Community Health and a Doctorate in Public Health from the Université de Montréal, Canada. He brings extensive leadership in healthcare systems analysis and improvement, combining experience in clinical practice in refugee health and tropical medicine, in clinical governance and in academic research.  

William (Bill) Ventres, MD, MA is a family physician and medical educator. He spent more than 25 years as a community-based family doctor working in both ambulatory and hospital settings, focusing on the care of underserved and minority populations in safety-net clinics and correctional health settings. He taught medical students throughout his clinical career and was a community-based academic until 2017, when he joined the faculty in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock.Bill contributed greatly to development of global family medicine, physician-patient communication, cross-cultural practice, and the use of qualitative methods in generalist research. A member of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine since 1988 he has been closely associated with the STFM Annual Conference as a presenter, mentor, Foundation Trustee, Editorial Board member, and colleague. He retired from UAMS in 2023 as the Ben Saltzman, MD, Distinguished Chair of Rural Family Medicine in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. He currently lives in San Salvador, El Salvador, where he is enrolled as a doctoral student in Latin American Philosophy at the José Simeón Cañas University of Central America.

Professor Igor Švab. First Head of the Department of Family Medicine and current Dean of the Medical Faculty, University of Ljubljana. He graduated in 1981, Masters in 1988, and PhD in 1991 at the University of Ljubljana. President of the European Association of Family Physicians WONCA Europe 2004-2010.  He is coordinator of national and international research projects and World Bank projects in the field of family medicine. Editor-in-chief of the Slovenian Journal of Public Health, Editor of the European Journal of General Practice,  Member of Slovenian and Croatian Academy of Medical Sciences, honorary member of the Royal College of General Practitioners (UK) and recipient of the title of WONCA World Fellow. He published more than 100 scientific and professional articles in MEDLINE.

Suzanne Strasberg is a Canadian primary care clinician with extensive experience in national medical leadership and board governance.Dr Suzanne Strasberg was chair of board of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and previously served as board chair for MD Financial Holdings Inc. a post she held for four years, has served as a board member with the CMA, and as board chair, board director and president of the Ontario Medical Association. She was a founding member of the Coalition of Family Physicians of Ontario.She was a family doctor in Toronto as a member of the Jane Finch Family Health Team. Her clinical interests include pediatrics, adolescent medicine, gynecology and palliative care.  She was provincial primary care lead at Cancer Care Ontario from 2012 to 2018. She qualified in medicine from the University of Toronto and ICD.D from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto

Richard Hobbs is a Pro-Vice-Chancellor (without portfolio) at the University of Oxford, where he holds the inaugural PCRT Mercian Chair in Primary Care (2022-) Previously the inaugural Nuffield Professor of Primary Care (2011-22) at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (2011-2024), he remains Director of the Oxford Institute of Digital Health (2020-) and is Lead for Global Partnerships for Oxford Primary Care. He delivered 42 years of service to the NHS as a doctor, 38 years committed to a disadvantaged and challenging inner-city practice until 2019, and 34 years of leadership and excellence as a clinical scientist focussed mainly upon primary care, clinical epidemiology, and vascular disease.He is one of the world’s foremost primary care academics and has held many national and international leadership roles, leading the development of two of Europe’s most highly rated centres for academic primary care, firstly at Birmingham and since 2011 at Oxford, now one of the largest and most successful centres for academic primary care in the world. He has made major contributions to growing primary care academic capacity, in terms of people development and research networks. He was the fifth recipient of the RCGP Discovery Prize in 2018 (occasional awards since 1953) and was awarded a CBE for services to medical research in 2018 in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.   He has an outstanding track record in cardiovascular disease research, delivering trials that changed international guidelines and practice, especially in the areas of stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation (BAFTA, SAFE, and SMART trials), heart failure burden and diagnosis (ECHOES and REFER trials), and hypertension self-management (TASMINH 1-5).He made many non-remunerated contributions to educational charitable boards, serving as trustee on some 7 learned societies and universities. Within universities, he has led several major change initiatives and the associated people management within Oxford University.  He also leads a new Institute of Applied Digital Science at Oxford.At the onset of COVID-19 he re-tasked much of his research to urgent COVID studies and is co-Chief Investigator of all the UK National Urgent Public Health Priority Studies in primary care, namely the national repurposed therapies platform trial (PRINCIPLE), national COVID Surveillance (Oxford-RCGP RSC), the national PC diagnostics platform trial (RAPTOR/CONDOR), and the national COVID novel anti-viral platform trial (PANORAMIC). Several papers during Covid ranked top 10 in the world for downloads by SSRN, who also list him as a ‘highly cited global researcher’.He has authored over 600 peer reviewed publications, has an h-index of 121, i10-index of 498, with >140,000 citations (>60,000 since 2019), with 136 papers with >100 citations, 20 papers >1000, and 15 papers >2000. 

Professor Emeritus Trinity College Dublin, Tom O’Dowd was appointed Professor of General Practice in 1993 and continues as a practising GP in West Tallaght, Dublin. After general practice vocational training in Ireland, Tom joined the University of Wales College of Medicine (1980 – 86) as a lecturer and subsequently the University of Nottingham (1986 – 1993 as a senior lecturer. He has been involved in curriculum change and design and postgraduate research supervision. He was Chairman of the Education Committee of the Medical Council that led to the current professionalisation of medical education in Ireland.

Prof Liz Sturgiss is a clinical general practitioner and primary care researcher in the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine at Bond University, Queensland. Liz leads an emerging research program on complex and chronic disease management in primary care that focuses on the translation of guidelines into real-world practice and the implementation of innovative interventions. Her research is based on theoretical principles from behaviour change and implementation science.

Florian Stigler is GP and researcher with a passion for making Evidence-Based Family Medicine exciting and easy to understand. He trained in Styria/Austria with postgraduate studies in the UK in Manchester (MPH) and London (DrPH). He works as a GP with focus on preventive medicine. He has a passion for new projects and created “Golden Nuggets of Family Medicine” – newsletter for busy GPs to provide exciting, practical, evidence-based and short insights. For free and without industry funding. He has been involved several professional organisations (AMSA, IFMSA, JAMÖ, WFPHA).

Dr Nagina Khan is a  Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent.  Her work champions lived experience, patient involvement, and socially impactful research, and she is actively involved in editorial roles with BMJ Leader, BMJ Mental Health, and other journals to help bring diverse voices into academic publishing.Dr. Nagina Khan, PhD is a Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Primary Care at the University of Kent’s Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS), where she also serves as Director of the MSc Applied Health Research Programme. Her current research supports Integrated Care Systems (ICS) to enhance collaborative research, prioritise underserved populations, and strengthen local infrastructures for evidence-based practice and innovation. Her expertise spans mental health, social justice, and healthcare equity. She has held research roles at the University of Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry and as a Project Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Canada, where she focused on culturally appropriate mental health care for South Asian communities. She was previously a Medical Research Council (MRC) Research Training Fellow at the University of Manchester, researching complex interventions for depression, and later conducted postdoctoral work at the NIHR School for Primary Care Research on early intervention for first-episode psychosis.She is currently an Associate Editor for BMJ Mental Health and an Editorial Fellow for BMJ Leader. She also served on the Editorial Board of BMC Medical Education. Her research interests include medical education, professionalism, social justice in healthcare, culturally appropriate care for South Asian Communities, and global mental health.

Dr John Gillies is an Edinburgh graduate who has worked in Malawi and as a general practitioner in rural Scotland, latterly in Selkirk for 16 years. He has been an undergraduate tutor, a GP educational supervisor and a training programme director with NHS Education Scotland. He was Chair of the Royal College of GPs in Scotland from 2010 to 2014 and deputy director of the Scottish School of Primary Care from 2015-2019. www.sspc.ac.uk He is an Honorary Professor of General Practice at the University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews. In 2019, he chaired a group for the Scottish Board for Academic Medicine which produced recommendations on increasing undergraduate exposure of medical students in Scotland to general practice. John is from North Uist Western Isles Scotland, proud of his Gàidhlig roots, language, and heritage. He co-directs the Compassion Initiative within the Global Health Academy, which works across disciplines to use the growing evidence for compassion in workplaces including healthcare. He is on the editorial board for a book of poetry for new doctors, “Tools of the Trade”, gifted to all new doctors in Scotland, published jointly by Scottish Poetry Library and Polygon Press in June 2022. He keeps fit — and tries to keep sane– by cycling and walking in the Scottish Borders, Western Isles and beyond.

Clinician, Activist, and Thought Leader who Challenged Accepted Obstetric CareFamily Physician, Pediatrician, Neonatologist, Maternity Care Researcher, Maternity, Primary Care and Organizational Consultant“Refusing to serve as an officer in the US Army Medical Corps during the Viet Nam War, he fled to Canada in 1967 with his wife Bonnie. He became a family practitioner, pediatrician, advocate, professor, and researcher at McGill and the University of British Columbia. Michael Klein has played a vital role in placing maternity care at the heart of family medicine. Motivated by concerns over the harmful effects of certain then widespread medical interventions, he pushed for the adoption of family-friendly birth practices, the re-introduction of midwifery, the promotion of doulas in birth and the elimination of routine intrusive interventions such as episiotomy. An influential mentor to many, his approaches are now widely adopted in maternity care.” Citation for the Order of Canada 2016.

Sir David Haslam was a GP in Cambridgeshire for 36 years and is a past Chair of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), past-President and past Chairman of Council of the RCGP, past-President of the BMA, and former Professor of General Practice at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus.He is currently chair of the charity “Young Lives vs Cancer”, Non-Executive Chair of Itecho Health, and an Associate with Kaleidoscope Health and Care. He has written 14 books, mainly on health topics for the lay public and translated into 13 languages, and has been invited as keynote speaker to Conferences in 33 different countries. Every year for over ten years he was listed by the HSJ as one of the most influential people in the NHS and was named by Debretts and the Sunday Times as one of the 500 most influential and inspirational people in the UK. David was awarded CBE in 2004 for services to Medicine and Health Care, and knighted in 2018 for services to NHS Leadership. 

“My passion is to help each other realise social impact through citizen, organisation and system movements.” Emma Challans-Rasool is Director of Horizons and Founder and Chair of @Proud2bOps a National Network of Operational Managers and Leaders. As a Director in Horizons, Emma leads at national level and is proud to have built a strong professional presence and credibility across health and care and supporting business sectors. Proud2bOps is a multi-award winning network, leading and supporting under represented professionals; Ops, Managers and Administrative Professionals. She is an entrepreneurial leader, continually striving to bring innovative solutions to improve people lives. As an experienced board level director and systems leader within the health and care sector she is a values driven leader centred around people, continually striving for innovation and improvement that enhances patient, colleague and customer experience. Her career includes senior positions with portfolios of organisational development, culture, operational management, quality improvement and large scale movements. She has experience both in the public and private sector, in both commercial and public facing businesses. With extensive non-executive director experience in citizen facing organisations, organisational effectiveness and continuous Improvement is at the heart of everything. She is a qualified coach & mentor committed to enhancing people’s performance and satisfaction. A very family orientated person and she values time with my friends and family, loves the outdoors, being creative, and enjoys fun holidays and adventures.

“Shedding light on the work that people do not often see and therefore take for granted.” Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Family Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. Implementation scientist and an expert in qualitative and mixed methods research. My research examines the interpersonal and organizational aspects of health care delivery with a particular focus on primary and behavioral health care. I enjoy examining and understanding how to address the challenges that emerge when implementing innovations and quality improvements in primary care practices, and my research highlights the often-invisible work and value of primary care clinical teams. One of my current projects is to study the staffing configurations of advanced primary care practices (professionals, roles, functions) in the United States (U.S.). I am honored to be a National Academy Medicine member, and I currently serve on the National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine Standing Committee for Primary Care, which is an advisory committee to the federal government on primary care. For fun, I mom, a wife, a Portland Timbers fan, a foodie, and dog-lover who endeavours to be a decent recreational tennis player.

Leading Academic GP and Health Service ResearcherInaugural RAND Chair of Health Services Research at the University of Cambridge where he founded and directed the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research (CCHSR), a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and RAND Europe.(2009-2016)Martin Roland trained in clinical medicine at the University of Oxford, where he obtained a first class honours degree and his doctorate. Following vocational training for general practice in Cambridge, he worked in London and Cambridge before moving to the Chair of General Practice in the University of Manchester in 1992. In 1994, he established and subsequently became Director of the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre. Between 2006 and 2009, he was also Director of the NIHR School for Primary Care Research, a collaboration between the five leading departments of primary care in England. Clinically active throughout his career, his main research interests were in developing methods of measuring quality and evaluating interventions to improve care using both quantitative and qualitative methods. With over 350 publications, his h-index is 80. Professor Roland was appointed CBE for services to medicine in 2003.

“The educator never left”…Teacher, Mentor, Family Doctor and Researcher.Dr. David Rábago is the Vice Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Penn State College of Medicine.David began professional life as a middle- and high-school teacher in Milwaukee and Chicago. After a nine-year teaching career, he transitioned to academic medicine. He has taught clinical and research-related topics at the medical school and residency levels. One of his goals is to help optimize the relationships between clinical, research and education endeavors of academic family medicine to the benefit of each. David is family physician at Penn State Health Medical Group, with a special interest in prevention, shared decision-making, and patient autonomy.

On an Academic Journey from the Azores to Lake LémanAlexandre Gouveia has a particular interest in quality and patient safety, in postgraduate teaching, and in clinical research within the Department of Ambulatory Care at Unisanté (University of Lausanne, Switzerland).Alexandre was appointed senior physician in 2021 and took on the responsibility of the Polyclinic of General Practice. In 2022, he began part-time training in medical education at Harvard University (Master of Medical Sciences in Medical Education). In 2023, he earned his Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree from the University of Lausanne, focusing on potentially avoidable hospitalizations in Switzerland.After obtaining his medical degree from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon in 2004 and completing his specialization in General Practice and Family Medicine in 2009, Alexandre Gouveia worked as a primary care physician in a group practice (Viana do Castelo, Portugal) for five years, and as a lecturer in Community Health at the School of Medicine of the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal).In 2014, he began his medical career in Switzerland as a resident physician at the University Medical Polyclinic in Lausanne and was appointed deputy chief resident in 2015. After earning a CAS in Clinical Research in 2017, he worked for two years in the Internal Medicine Department at CHUV as deputy chief resident and received his FMH title of specialist in General Internal Medicine in 2019.

Oscar Lyons is a researcher, educator and doctor who specialises in healthcare leadership development.Oscar worked as a doctor in Hauora Tairāwhiti and Counties Manukau (Aotearoa NZ) before completing his DPhil in “Evaluating Medical Leadership Development Programmes” at Oxford University.After his DPhil Oscar was the first Programme Director for the Oxford University MSc in Global Healthcare Leadership. He now runs Thrum Leadership Ltd., a spinout from his DPhil research that supports real-world impact from leadership development in healthcare through evidence-based programmes and research. Oscar is Associate Editor of BMJ Leader, Assistant Director of the Green Templeton College Health Systems Development Centre, and Module Lead for Oxford University’s MSc in Surgical Science and Practice. Oscar spends his spare time singing in bands, playing bass, cycling and rowing.

Professor Parker Magin is Senior Academic Advisor, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners GP Training Research Unit, Newcastle, Australia; Conjoint Professor, the University of Newcastle; and Adjunct Professor, the University of New South Wales. He has been an NHMRC Medical Postgraduate Scholar 2003-2006; and 2007-cohort member, International Primary Care Research Leadership Programme, University of Oxford. His main research interests are the in-consultation experiences of GP registrars; antimicrobial stewardship; medicines use and deprescribing in older patients; and dementia.

From clinician to academic, from public service to leadership, forever shaping change.Martin Marshall is the Chair of the Nuffield Trust, Emeritus Professor of Healthcare Improvement at UCL and a non-executive director of the Royal Devon University Healthcare Trust. Martin was a GP for over 30 years, initially as a GP partner in Devon and more recently in Newham in East London and was Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners from 2019 until 2022. He was appointed as a deputy Chief Medical Officer for England and Director General in the Department of Health in March 2006, and in 2007 became director of clinical quality of the Health Foundation. He was previously Programme Director for Primary Care at UCL Partners, a clinical academic at the University of Manchester and a Harkness Fellow in Healthcare Policy based at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. He received both the John Fry Award (2005) and the James MacKenzie Award (2008), from the Royal College of General Practitioners, and in 2005 was awarded a CBE for Services to Health Care.

Bruce Arroll graduated in New Zealand, trained in Family Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and completed a  Masters in Clinical Epidemiology in Vancouver, before returning to NewZealand.At McMaster, he was so impressed with clinical epidemiology, which later became an evidence-based practice, that he began a PhD in Epidemiology when he returned to NZ late in 1987, conducting a randomised controlled trial of sodium restriction and exercise in treated hypertensives. In 1991, he joined the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, where he has remained. His research changed to rational prescribing of antibiotics in primary care, and he later got interested in rapid assessment and treatment of mental health conditions. In 2015, he started training in FACT (focussed acceptance and commitment therapy). He now works at the Calder Clinic at the Auckland City Mission with a highly disadvantaged group of citizens, most of whom have been homeless but are now housed, and many of whom have substance issues and where the average age of death is 51. Bruce has trained in written exposure therapy and is planning on conducting a randomised controlled trial in the Calder Clinic. He is also director of the Goodfellow Unit (www.goodfellowunit.org), which educates primary care clinicians

Pendleton’s Rules, Primary Colours, and Bringing Joy to WorkDavid Pendleton is a psychologist, organisation and management development consultant, author and professor. He completed a DPhil at Oxford on Doctor-Patient Communication in General Practice, was Stuart Fellow at the RCGP, consultant to their membership exam and was a Trustee of the College for 6 years. In the corporate field, he was Director of People and Organisation Development from 2001-3 at Innogy (now npower) a FTSE100 company, and an in-house consultant at Cathay Pacific Airways from 1993-5 based in Hong Kong. He co-founded the Edgecumbe Consulting Group with his wife Dr Jenny King and they co-led the company from 1995-2015. In the academic field, he was an Associate Fellow at the Said Business School at Oxford from 2005-2022 and has been an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College Oxford since 2007. He has been Professor in Leadership at Henley Business School since 2017 and has been appointed Advisor in Leadership at the FMLM in 2025.

Olympic Gold Medalist, and World Leader in Sports Medicine Dr Richard Budgett was the Medical and Scientific Director of the IOC from October 2012 to December 2024. Before that he was Chief Medical Officer for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games from 2007 to 2012.Richard was Director of Medical Services for the British Olympic Association from 1994 to 2007 and Team GB Chief Medical Officer at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake City, Athens and Turin. He was team doctor to the Great Britain men’s rowing team from 2005 to 2008 and was Governing Body Medical Officer for the Great Britain Bobsleigh Association from 1990 to 2007 attending the Olympic Winter Games in Albertville in 1992 and Lillehammer in 1994. He was a member of the IOC Medical Commission at the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 and Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010. 

Chaire de Recherche du Canada sur la Gouvernance Clinique des Services de Première LigneMylaine Breton holds a Canadian Research Chair in clinical governance on primary health care.She is based at the Department of Social Science and Medicine at University of Sherbrooke. She trained as an occupational therapist, followed be an MBA at Université Laval, a doctorate in Health Service Management from University of Montréal in 2009, and a postdoctoral at Université de Sherbrooke and McGill University. Her current research focuses on primary health care to better understanding promising organizational innovations to improve accessibility and continuity such as the implementation of centralized waiting list for patients without a primary healthcare provider and advanced access.

Dr Mercy Wanjala is a graduate of the University of Nairobi School of Medicine, she holds a Master of Comprehensive General Medicine from the University of Medical Sciences of Havana, and an MBA in Healthcare Management at Strathmore University Business School. She currently works at the County Government of Embu Health Department as a Family Physician and Primary Healthcare Coordinator. She has held prominent positions, including Head of Primary Health Care, Embu County and National secretary for the Kenya Association of Family Physicians. She sits on the National technical Working Group on Primary Health Care and the Technical Group for National Cancer Strategic Information, Research, Registration and Surveillance. She served as a visiting Lecturer in Primary Health Care in Global Health at the University of Global Health Equity-School of Nursing and as part-time lecturer in Health Services Leadership at Kabarak University Department of Family Medicine. She held leadership roles in the Africa Forum for Primary Health Care, WONCA Working Party for Quality and Patient Safety, WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice and Women in Global Health Kenya Chapter. In 2023 she won the Young Family Doctors Rising Star Award from the Africa Region of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) and the WONCA Sydney Conference Full Scholarship.

Charlotte Williams is Deputy Chief Executive Officer at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust. She leads on quality improvement and innovation, transformation, strategy, digital and organisational development.  She began her career on the NHS General Management Training Scheme before joining East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust in 2003. She joined Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in 2006 before moving to the role of Assistant Director of Operations at North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust. In 2010 Charlotte joined UCL Partners as Director of Integrated Cancer and Executive Director for the London Cancer Integrated Cancer System before being promoted to the role of Chief of Staff at UCL Partners in 2013.Charlotte is an Honorary Associate Professor at University of Birmingham, School of Social Policy. She is an Associate Editor of the BMJ Leader healthcare journal, and has published on the topic of patient involvement in major redesign of health services. 

Fern R. Hauck, is the Spencer P. Bass, MD Twenty-First Century Professor of Family Medicine and Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia. Fern’s research is focused on risk factors and protective factors for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and other causes of sleep-related sudden infant death, including pacifier use, infant sleep location including bedsharing, and infant feeding, with particular attention to racial-ethnic disparities. She serves as an advisor to numerous federal agencies and SIDS organizations to assist in SIDS and infant mortality related projects and she is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on SIDS, which develops evidence-based guidelines for safe infant sleep and prevention of SIDS and other sleep-related infant deaths. She founded and directs the University of Virginia International Family Medicine Clinic, which cares for several thousand refugees who resettled in Central Virginia from around the world. In addition to comprehensive primary healthcare, the IFMC team provides educational programming for residents and medical students, conducts quality improvement and research projects, and collaborates with community partners.

A Lifetime Commitment to Social Justice and Health Care Access. Carol Herbert is Professor Emerita of Family Medicine at Western University (London, Canada), and Professor Emerita of Family Practice at UBC (Vancouver, Canada). Past Chair of the University Board of Trustees for the American University of the Caribbean and a member of the Board of Governors of Simon Fraser University.  She served as Dean, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario (1999-2010) and was Royal Canadian Legion Professor and Head of the UBC Department of Family Practice (1988-98).  At UBC, she was founding Head of the Division of Behavioural Medicine and a co-founder of the UBC Institute of Health Promotion Research.  She is former Editor of the international journal, Patient Education and Counseling. Dr. Herbert is a UBC graduate in Honours Biochemistry and in Medicine. She was a full-service community-based family physician and clinical instructor at the REACH community health centre, a UBC teaching facility in Vancouver, from 1971 until 1982 when she joined the full-time faculty in the UBC Department of Family Practice.

Paul Little is Professor of Primary Care Research at the University of Southampton.  He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medial Sciences, a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator (emeritus), and winner of the Maurice Wood award (for Lifetime contribution to primary care research).He led a wide range of studies in acute infections; diagnostic studies, prospective cohorts, placebo controlled trials, pragmatic trials of antibiotic prescribing strategies, and complex interventions to address antimicrobial stewardship and reduce the threat to public health of antibiotic resistance. His research has demonstrated reductions in antibiotic use in RTIs using: delayed antibiotic prescriptions; a clinical score for pharyngitis (FeverPAIN); communication skills training; C-reactive protein (CRP) point-of-care tests; and a digital intervention to support handwashing. This research has formed a key part of 9 national and 4 international guidelines, two UK 5-year AMR strategies and a successful intervention by the CMO for overprescribing GPs