Working Party News

February, 2018

Every month the journal Education for Primary Care provides WONCA members with free access to one interesting article. We are offering free access this month to a paper from Maggie Bartlett and the team at Keele Medical School UK on community attachments for 15 weeks in final year and the accompanying stimulating commentary from Paul Worley.

January, 2018

Prof Val Wass, chair of the WONCA Working Party on Education, updates us on the latest and very successful activities of the working party in Thailand, and more to come in 2018

January, 2018

We are a research team supported by WONCA and we seek panel members from Low and Middle Income Countries. The team is led by Prof Felicity Goodyear-Smith, Chair of the WONCA Working Party on Research, and co-investigators include WONCA President Prof Amanda Howe. Our project will identify the most important research questions on the organisation and financing of primary health care in low and middle income countries throughout the world.

January, 2018

​Lauren Smithson MD, together with some American colleagues struggling with communication and isolation in wanting to train in rural medicine, started the society for young rural surgeons (SYRUS). This was something that came out of a need for people with rural interests in health care being able to find mentors, jobs, and training opportunities in rural medical careers. Basically, we need connectivity, and we need a strong rural voice in medical training. Lauren is a surgeon in St Anthony, Newfoundland and writes more about SYRUS.

December, 2017

Climate change is the biggest health threat of the 21st century--and tackling it is perhaps our best opportunity to better global health. How are current medical learners and health professionals interacting with international climate change negotiations?

December, 2017

We invite you to 15th WONCA World Rural Health Conference at New Delhi from 26-29 April 2018. Registration and Abstract submission is open for all. Last Date for Abstract Submission is 31st December.

November, 2017

Paola Rava Dellepiane, WONCA Working Party on the Environment member writes more on the issue of WONCA conferences as a very favorable setting to promote the issue of Planetary Health and increase the general awareness for it.

November, 2017

My colleagues Professor Nobutaro Ban (Japan), Dr Eva Irene Maglonzo (Philippines), Victor Ng (Canada), Hashmet Parveen (Brunei) and Chandramani Thuraisingham (Malaysia) joined me to run sessions on (i) The Undergraduate (UG)Curriculum (ii) Continuous Professional Development and (iii) Formative Assessment.

November, 2017

WONCA has had a Working Party on Rural Practice for many years. Their vision is “health for all rural people around the world”, and, as for WONCA as a whole, one of the key aims of their advocacy is to ensure governments recognise the importance of family medicine and its rural and remote workforce. It is therefore a source of celebration that Prof Paul Worley, a member of the WONCA Rural Working Party, has been appointed as the first Rural Health Commissioner of Australia

November, 2017

Prof Christopher Dowrick, Chair of WONCA Working Party on Mental Health, reports: Members of our working party continue to be busy, all round the world. In the Asia-Pacific region, Weng Chin has successful launched our new guidance on Non-drug interventions for common mental health problems during the Pattaya conference this week. I am delighted with this document, and commend it to you.