YDM Newsletter: European Young Family Doctors Movement



EYFDM does not know how to be quiet it seems. We have had another busy time since June!

Firstly, I would like to announce that we have elected our new President-Elect, Stuart Holmes from the UK, who will take over as President from Nick Mamo at WONCA Europe conference in Brussels in June 2023. We also elected Aaron Poppleton from the UK to serve as the EYFDM Liaison to WONCA Europe, serving also on the WONCA Europe Executive.

In June we made quite a lot of noise in London. We had a fantastic Pre-Conference with fruitful plenaries and workshops, and a lot of strong connections were formed as our community continues to grow. This was clearly shown by the community we saw at the WONCA Europe/RCGP Annual conference in London! We also released our Annual report for 2021/2022 which you can read here.
During the conference we had a very well received Plenary session with Marina Jotic-Ivanovic from Bosnia&Herzegovina, Julien Artigny from Martinique/France and Nick Mamo from Malta/UK. We also raised a record €4600 for our Bursary Fund to support young GPs especially from lower income countries to participate at WONCA Europe and EYFDM events, thanks especially to all those who donated, and to Marta Kurdzielewicz, our Awards and Fundraising Officer! We also had our annual Junior Researcher Award, won this year by Aaron Poppleton from the UK!

In September our Executive Group met in Wrocław, Poland to discuss where we are, and to plan the year ahead.

In October, together with the other Young Doctor Movements (WONCA) we collaborated with actively contributed to the Junior Doctors’ Network (WMA) campaign to mark the Astana Declaration Anniversary.

After the challenges of the COVID pandemic, our Exchange programme has been picking up again thanks to the hard work of Rocio Garcia-Gutierrez Gomez, our Exchange Officer, and her fantastic team of National Exchange Coordinators! We had a very successful pre-conference exchange in Doboj, Bosnia & Herzegovina in September and we also saw the return of the Balearic Meeting including its pre-conference exchange in October.

Since the conference in London we also started advocating more strongly for better access to events for families and parents with kids. This is an ongoing process and the support we have seen for this is highly encouraging! Ana Cristina Franco Spinola, our Policy Officer has taken this on as part of a wider Accessibility Policy with great energy and we look forward to the progress we can make in this area.

We have also restarted our Bridge Project, an Exchanges-ASPIRE collaboration with over 30 new participants signing up from all over the world for this round! We are looking forward to see the ideas and projects they develop!

Finally, we have been preparing for a council meeting in January of 2023 where we will be discussing the future of our organisation, the bylaws that govern our organisation as well as our logo and website, on which Marta Kurdzielewicz (our Awards&Fundraising Officer) and Chris Rechtenwald (our Image Officer) have both been working hard. We will also be hearing from the team organising our upcoming Pre-Conference in Brussels in June 2023! We hope to see many of you there!