Imperial College London Primary Care

The Imperial College International Public Health Society is hosting a debate entitled: S hould corporations be involved in deciding public health policy?  Monday 31st January 2011 Starts: 17.50 Finishes: 19.00 Location: Clinical Lecture Theatre (Room 234), Cambridge Wing, St Mary’s Hospital Paddington, Praed Street, London W2 1NY. The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, recently announced his new plans for corporations such as McDonalds and PepsiCo to be key players in writing UK public health policy. They will co-chair five ‘responsibility deals’ with government ministers, which will give them unprecedented power and influence. Will this help fight obesity, alcohol and diet-related diseases, or make these problems worse? The 3 speakers will be: MELANIE LEECH , Director General of the Food and Drink Federation. The Food and Drink Federation is the UK’s largest trade association representing food and drink companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Cadbury’s, Mars, Nestle, Mu...

I am very sad to have to report that Dr Grant Blair died in December 2010. Grant died peacefully at home from the complications of a long-term illness. Grant was for many years the joint head of the Year 6 General Practice Student Assistantship on the undergraduate medical course at Imperial College. During his time at Imperial College, he made a considerable contribution to undergraduate primary care education, and was a very committed and popular teacher. Grant also made important contributions to postgraduate teaching and training in primary care, both in the UK and overseas. Grant was also for many years a GP at the Lillie Road Surgery in Fulham. The picture below shows Grant on one of his educational trips to China, where he was very held in very high esteem for the work he did to develop primary healthcare.

It is with great sadness that I have to report the death of Dr Mabel Alli. Mabel died in December 2010 from the complications of a long-term illness. Mabel was the Director of the North West London Haemoglobinopathy Network, which is based in the Department of Public Health at Brent Primary Care Trust, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College. Through her work with the Haemoglobinopathy Network, Mabel made an important contribution to improving the care of people with sickle cell disease and thalassaemia. In her most recent project, Mabel was working with the NW London CLAHRC programme to develop a training programme in sickle cell disease for general practitioners in Brent PCT.

Academic specialty trainee year four general practice posts  provide an opportunity for GP registrars to develop academic skills. The two posts based in the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College offer five sessions in a local general practice (four clinical, one non-clinical) and five academic sessions. You can read the views of two of our recent Academic ST4 doctors in two articles published in the BMJ Careers Focus. The first article describes the scheme and the second article describes Amanda Allen's and Anna Whiteford's experience of their time in the ST4 post.

New General Practice at a Glance textbook Undergraduate teachers in the department have been commissioned to write the general practice edition of the highly popular “At a Glance” series of medical text books published by Wiley-Blackwell . The series is aimed at medical students, junior doctors and allied health professionals, and breaks down complex subjects into a series of illustrated two-page spreads. Consultant editors Dr Paul Booton, Dr Margaret Harper, Dr Carol Cooper and Dr Graham Easton are co-ordinating the project, and aiming for publication in 2011. Imperial College teachers run RCGP course in China Imperial College GP teachers Dr Frances Carter, Dr Richard Hooker and Dr Graham Easton have just returned from a successful visit to Zhejiang Province in China where they ran a RCGP course on clinical communication for local Chinese family practitioners.  The visit built on the work of Dr Grant Blair acting in his capacity as RCGP China liaison fellow. Clinical comm...

Sunday November 14 is World Diabetes Day . The number of people suffering from diabetes is increasing across the world and diabetes is now recognised as a global epidemic. There are currently about 200 million people worldwide with diabetes and this number may is predicted to increase to around 330 million by 2025. In the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College, we have an active research, quality improvement and education programmes in diabetes. In research, we have worked with a number of our local primary care organisations to improve the prevention, early detection and treatment of diabetes. Examples of this work include QOF Plus (Hammersmith & Fulham), Vascular Risk Assessment (Ealing) and CONDUIT (Wandsworth). The department also provides primary care advice to the Diabetes Research Network .

One of the members of the department, Dr Utz Pape , was the co-author of a paper published recently in the lading scientific journal Nature . In the paper, Dr Pape and his colleagues investigated the link between a genetically-linked enzyme defect and myeloid cancers.