From the President: Cultivating the Future

President's Messages November 2024

November, 2024

WONCA News November

Last month I mentioned that I had attended the WONCA Europe conference in Dublin. At the opening ceremony, I participated in a panel where I was asked “What are your views / your priorities for cultivating the future for Family Medicine?”. I gave five priorities.

PRIORITY 1 – More money to Primary care

WHO has notes we are off track to achieve UHC by 2023. To better achieve this the world needs to strengthen and increase spending on primary care and this includes family medicine. To increase spending on Primary Care we must move money from secondary and tertiary care to primary care.

How can more money in primary care help the future of Family medicine?

Dr Margaret Chan, past Director General of the WHO captured our value and said “A health system where Primary Care is the backbone and Family Medicine the bedrock, delivers the best outcomes, at the lowest cost, and with the greatest user satisfaction”.

The world needs to strengthen and increase spending on primary care and this includes family medicine.

PRIORITY 2 – WONCA as the go-to organization

Last month, I reported on a significant event, in that Dr John Fogarty our liaison person in the WHO and WHO primary care lead, had attended half a day of our WONCA Executive meeting – a first to my knowledge. At this meeting he outlined future projects where WONCA input will be valuable. Read more here.

WONCA represents our Member Organisations and in turn, their members, in our work with the WHO at both the international and regional levels and also through some of our Working Parties and Special interest Groups. But lets not forget working with other PHC organisations to expand our global influence.

PRIORITY 3 – Strengthen Our Discipline

This will be achieved with ongoing attention in all of our countries with the following:

Academic departments of GP/FM exist in ALL medical schools;
Specific training for our specialty and indeed, recognition that we are a specialty;
Continuing Professional Development which should be led by the profession and not imposed by the government;
Research within and on in our speciality – remember Barbara Starfield’s work to prove our value to health systems is all I need to say!!
Mentoring our newer colleagues and those training to become the next generation of family doctors, and as WONCA President I would add the next generation of leaders for the profession.

Our newer colleagues are so very important, and I was pleased to see that I was joined on this opening ceremony panel not only by the WONCA Europe President, Shlomo Vinker, but also younger colleagues, Dr Aaron Poppleton (pictured with me) and Dr İkbal Hümay Arman (pictured with the panel facilitator Mr Bryan Dobson). Aaron and İkbal were representing the European Young Family Doctors’ Movement (EYFDM), and both are doctors in the early stages of their careers in family medicine.

WONCA has Working parties (WPs) and Special Interest groups (SIGs) that can support activities to strengthen Family Medicine. In Education and also in Research, our respective WPs have each produced a useful book in the past year as well. Join a Working Party or Special Interest Group.

One project WONCA is currently running in all regions of the world is the Core Values project, attempting to define what brings us together despite our differences. This is led by Past President Anna Stavdal. The knowledge we gain will indeed strengthen family medicine.

PRIORITY 4 – Greening Our Discipline

Our future in family medicine can include consideration of our carbon footprint. We need to be greener in our clinics and in our prescribing. Simple things matter.

Stop prescribing unnecessary medications/ inappropriate polypharmacy. Include lifestyle prescriptions.

Stop prescribing metered aerosol inhalers in favour of dry powder and we save 10% of the carbon footprint of Primary care!!

I was delighted to be asked for more information on what WONCA has done in the Planetary Health arena. WONCA has a very strong working party on Planetary Health.

Last year they developed a sustainable events guideline to help keep our conferences green, and at our World conference in Sydney, we held a green day with a strong press presence and keynotes, activities and a call to action on planetary health.

This year the World Family Doctor Day May 19 theme was “healthy planet healthy people”. but "Healthy Planet, Healthy People is not only the business of family doctors on one day, it is the business of all of us, every day,".

PRIORITY 5 – talk to each other

A final thought to cultivate the future of family medicine - I repeat the words of our first WONCA president, another Australian, Dr Monty Kent Hughes, speaking in 1972: “the future of our professional discipline will depend on our ability to work together in the service of humanity.”

So lets keep the dialogue going. It’s so much easier, in 2024, to keep the dialogue going thanks to advances in technology. So as well as seeing each other at WONCA events and we have the opportunity to engage between meetings in the WONCA Working Parties, Special Interest Groups and other activities in between face-to-face meetings.