Professor Helen Lester was secretary to SAPC from 2004-2010 and Chair from 2010-2013. She was an inspirational GP and academic who made a difference to the lives of many people. Helen was truly one of the iconic figures of academic general practice. Helen died peacefully at home with her family in March 2013 - a date which feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago. To honour her memory, in 2014 SAPC started the annual Helen Lester Memorial Lecture series. The inspiration for this lecture series came from Helen herself. Helen challenged us all to think more creatively about many things –...

Fellowships are one route to developing a research portfolio towards becoming a leader in health research. They can be a useful way of funding people’s time, research projects and training development. Fellowships are available from a range of funders to support people at different points in their research path. Fellowship support Talking to people who have been through the process of applying and being awarded fellowships as well as talking to people who have helped others develop applications may help you to avoid the common pitfalls and demystify the process. SAPC PHoCuS members have been...

The Behaviour Change Special Interest group held their first network and training day in October 2016 with a workshop focused on the Person-Based Approach to developing behaviour change interventions in primary care. The workshop was kindly hosted by the University of Southampton with support from the Centre for Clinical and Community Applications of Health Psychology (CCCAHP) and the Academic Unit of Primary Care and Population Sciences (PCPS). Thirty-two academics and six speakers joined Dr. Sarah Tonkin-Crine (Oxford) and Dr. Ingrid Muller (Southampton) from across the country with...

The premier primary care research meeting in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Society of Academic Primary Care (SAPC) meeting, was hosted by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Here is a round up of some of the talks that caught Domhnall's attention.

Outlines SAPC commitment to building a community of primary care publishers - optimising the impact of the work we do through collaboration, offering career development opportunities to the APC community, and offering SAPC members benefits eg through reduced open access publishing fees. We start our new round of affiliations with a new partnership with the Journal of Comorbidity

Quotes from mentees of their experience of the SAPC mentorship programme "I wanted to give a huge thanks to Prof Joanne Reeve. I found her name on the SAPC mentor page about 4 years ago. I was a first 5 looking to start my academic career but due to family reasons was living and working between the north and south of England. Joanne was incredibly supportive of me continuing to put my family first but also starting my career. She signposted me to roles, and further academic training posts and gave me the confidence to pursue them. I feel extremely lucky to have found her on this mentor page,...

Quotes from SAPC mentors of their experience of the mentorship programme "For me being a mentor is about supporting academic staff to fulfil their potential in their terms. I see my role as facilitative, involving listening, questioning, synthesising and commenting, in that order. I very much enjoy it. Given the very demanding and often insecure environments that many researchers currently work in, helping people to explore their work priorities and goals, whilst at the same time placing them in the context of the rest of their lives, is very gratifying. It also makes you review and reflect...

The Annual General Meeting of the Society for Academic Primary Care will take place from 12.30 to 13.25 on Thursday 7th July 2016 during the 45th Annual Scientific Meeting at Dublin Castle. Here are the papers: Agenda Paper A - draft minutes from AGM 2015 Oxford Paper B - Officers' report Paper Ci - Treasurer's report Paper Cii - Accounts year end 31 May 2016 Paper D - Head of Teaching group report (HoTs), Head of Departments group report (HODs) will be given as a verbal report at the AGM Venue: Poddle Room, Printworks Building, Dublin Castle Copies of all the papers will be handed out at the...

19th May, University of Manchester The SAPC early careers working group held their first networking and career development day on the 19th of May, kindly hosted by the University of Manchester. Fifteen researchers and five speakers joined Dr Helen Atherton (Warwick) and Dr Rebecca Morris (Manchester) from across the UK, with attendees coming from as far as Southampton and Glasgow. We kicked things off by getting everyone talking – Joanne Reeve, Chair of SAPC and Associate Clinical Professor at Warwick hosted a session on your ‘2 minute pitch,’ forcing us all to think about how we sell...