Imperial College London Primary Care

Helen Atherton and Robert de Vries were awarded the prizes for the best PhD student presentations at the recent Annual School of Public Health PhD Student Research Symposium.

Our Seminar this week was given given by Dr Bryan English, Chief Medical Officer for Chelsea Football Club , the recent winners of the Premier League and FA Cup. Dr English qualified in Medicine at Sheffield University in 1986 and has been the Chief Medical Officer for Chelsea FC since 1995, overseeing a medical team of 21 people. Dr English has also worked within the NHS for 13 years, with the last 6 of these as a Consultant in Orthopaedic& Musculoskeletal Medicine in Sheffield and Leeds. He previously worked as CMO for Judo before moving to UK Athletics in 1997. He has worked over 2 Olympiads with UKA before going full time into Sports Medicine in 2000 for The Sydney Olympics. Following the Athens Olympics, he moved into professional football. Dr English spoke about the challenges in providing medical care and health promotion to a group of elite footballers. 

Congratulation to Paul Booton on his appointment as Chair of the Year 5 Examination Board.

On behalf of the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College, I would like to congratulate the players and staff of our local football team, Chelsea FC , for winning the "Double". Winning both the Premier League title and the FA Cup in the same season is a tremendous achievement. The way in which premier league footballers keep themselves fit and healthy through their carefully planned programme of exercise and diet is a great example to people of all ages. We are facing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes brought about through high-calorie diets and a lack of exercise. Let's hope that more people will try to follow the example of our local footballers and aim to keep themselves in good physical shape.

This week's seminar was given by Professor Derek Bell, who spoke on the NW London CLAHRC programme. The North-West London CLAHRC is an alliance of academic and healthcare organisations working to develop and promote a more efficient, accelerated and sustainable uptake of clinically innovative and cost-effective research interventions into patient care. Patients expect high standards of care and treatment wherever and whenever they access the NHS. There is a need for new evidence to be implemented more rapidly to deliver better care and better outcomes. The Cooksey report identified the implementation of new products and approaches into clinical practice as the second gap in the translation of health research and called for a systematic approach to the adoption of new interventions. The High Level Group Report on Clinical Effectiveness (2007) identified a number of the challenges facing the successful implementation of effective and efficient clinical care. These include iden...

Today's seminar was given by Dr Veena Raleigh from the Kings Fund. A summary of Dr Raleigh's presentation is given below. Quality has been at the centre of recent NHS policy, and the NHS Next Stage Review highlighted the role of information and measurement in supporting quality improvement, particularly in relation to patient safety, clinical effectiveness and patient experience. It is therefore important to be clear how quality can be measured and by whom – and how the information can be used to improve services. If quality measurement is going to have greatest impact, all those involved – policy-makers, commissioners, board members, managers and clinicians – need to be aware of the opportunities and challenges it presents. Understanding how to produce good indicators of quality is only the first step; what is critical is having systems in place to make use of the information to improve patient care. This will be particularly important in the current economic climate, which pu...

This Week's Seminar will be given by Dr Veena Raleigh from the Kings Fund. Dr Raleigh will speak on Quality Measurement: the potential and the perils . The seminar will be held on on 28th April 2010 at 12.30pm in the Seminar Room, 3rd Floor, Reynolds Building, Charing Cross Campus. All welcome.