10.04.2006
Professor Helen Smith (pictured below) of Brighton and Sussex Medical School, will be giving a lecture on 24 April as part of the University Centre Hastings open lecture series.
Health service reforms in the UK are moving towards primary care-centred services, and in her lecture Professor Smith will note how the evidence available broadly supports this shift, although some also indicates the limits of substitution for secondary care. She will describe the development of the General Practitioner as a medical generalist, and discuss how recent policy may threaten the context and content of general practice.
"This is an exciting time for General Practice, with multiple changes to our remit and service organisation - the challenge is retaining the excellent traditional characteristics of our service whilst embracing major policy changes", Professor Smith says.
Professor Smith leads the teaching of Public Health and General Practice at BSMS, and is the director of the Surrey and Sussex Integrated Primary Care Research Network (SIREN). She also contributes to local postgraduate education, teaching on a GP refresher course and on an MSc programme in Community Cardiology. She has previously taught at the University of Southampton, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of Keele, North Staffordshire Polytechnic and the University of Nottingham.
She plays a role in numerous other primary care research initiatives, and has published extensively on the subject. Among her other research is the prevention of hip fractures in the elderly, hay fever relief and new ways of dealing with GPs' workloads - now taken up nationally as NHS Direct.
The lecture will be at University Centre Hastings, Havelock Road, Hastings, from 6.30-7.30 pm on 24 April. For more information or to book, please call 01273 643226.
UCH is an initiative in partnership with the Hastings and Bexhill Task Force, the University of Brighton, Canterbury Christ Church University College, the University of Greenwich, Hastings College of Art and Technology, the Open University and the University of Sussex.
Professor Smith's research profile is available at www.bsms.ac.uk/profiles/helen_smith.htm.
Contact: Marketing and Communications, University of Brighton, 01273 643022
