Dr Shlomo Vinker, New President of WONCA Europe

WONCA welcomes Prof Dr Shlomo Vinker as a new member of the Executive Committee. Dr Vinker will serve as President of WONCA Europe, succeeding Prof. Dr Mehmet Ungan.

Dr Shlomo Vinker is an active family physician, working in an urban clinic in Ashdod (the sixth-largest city and the largest port, on the Mediterranean coast), Israel.

He is a Full Professor in Family Medicine, Vice Dean for community teaching, and Chair of the Department of Family Medicine (2006-2011, 2016-) at the Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv.

Prof Dr Vinker Published more than 200 research papers in peer reviewed medical journals cited in PubMed. His main research topics are chronic diseases management in primary care, quality and quality indicators in family medicine and preventive medicine.

In WONCA, he has served as WONCA EUROPE - Member at large (2016-2019), President Elect (2019-2021). Since 2015, he is also  Executive board member at the EGPRN (European General Practice Research Network) , and head of the educational committee since 2018. With many partners, he created a web-based research course in family medicine with 25 modules, that is free of charge to EGPRN members and with a symbolic fee for others. They have hundreds of participants and more than 30 certificated graduates.  

Dr Vinker is also an active member of the Israeli Association of Family Physicians (IAFP), where he has served as Honorary secretary (2007-2009), Chairman (2009-2018), honorary treasurer (2018-). As chairman, he led a change in the residency program, shifting most of the residency time outside the hospital wards to family medicine and ambulatory setting. Under his leadership, IAFP founded a plan for research grants, which gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to encourage research in family medicine. He also founded an open Wiki like website with high quality medical information, with currently more than 6,200 articles.

Lastly, at Leumit Health Services, he serves as Chief Medical Officer of a nationwide healthcare organization serving 730,000 patients since 2015. He established a research institute in Leumit and chairing it from 2018, aiming to enhance research capacity in family medicine and primary care. 

Dr Vinker is married with four children and three granddaughters. 
 

Featured Doctor: Dr Shlomo Vinker