Hull York Medical School appoints Professor of Primary Care Research

Professor of Primary Care Research, Joanne Reeve

According to NHS England General Practice provides over 300 million patient consultations each year compared to 23 million A&E visits, making primary care the bed rock of the NHS. Yet the growing burden of chronic complex illness are creating real pressure for primary care practitioners in terms of capacity. Dr Reeve believes rigorous primary care research is needed to deliver the workforce, research evidence, and strategic vision for practice and policy.

She says, ‘My work tackles two of the biggest challenges facing modern healthcare systems. Namely, finding whole-person centred primary care solutions for the growing burden of chronic, complex illness; and building capacity for high quality, meaningful primary care scholarship to support the necessary changes.

I lead an internationally recognised body of research supporting the critical development and delivery of the individually tailored model of care that is expert generalist practice. I combine expertise in the design and delivery of expert generalist medical care with methodological expertise in complex intervention development and evaluation to support service re-design. My current research projects tackle some of the major challenges for today’s primary care community including multimorbidity, problematic polypharmacy, mental health, frailty and acute care.

Professor Reeve graduated from Liverpool Medical School in 1997, and started out planning a career in public health medicine. A Masters in Public Health rekindled her interests in the professional, clinical and academic challenges of developing person centred care. She returned to General Practice and successfully applied for doctoral funding from the NCCRCD (the precursor to NIHR) to look at person-centred management of distress in terminal illness. Following her PhD, she worked in Manchester, Liverpool and Warwick developing a portfolio of work on Primary Care redesign based on the principles of medical generalism (whole person medical care). Her work has been supported by fellowships from the NIHR (including a Clinical Lecturership at Manchester, and a Clinician Scientist Award at Liverpool). She is an active member of the Society for Academic Primary Care (SAPC). She was Chair from 2013-2016, and remains co-opted onto the Executive as lead of the SAPC GP Scholarship work. She is also a nationally elected member of Council for the Royal College of General Practitioners, and a non-executive member of the Innovation & Research Board. Joanne also sits on the editorial board for the British Journal of General Practice.

Professor Reeve is delighted to have moved to Hull York Medical School to work with the team here to champion expertise in academic primary care driving improvements in primary care provision.

As a practising GP I can make a difference for one patient at a time, but as an academic GP I can help change the care many patients receive. I am delighted to be joining Hull York Medical School and very much looking forward to working with colleagues to build the profile, capacity and impact of primary care and primary care scholarship – locally, nationally and internationally.

Since it was established in 2003, Hull York Medical School, has had a strong focus on primary care and community based research. Primary Care Research at Hull is based within the Supportive Care, Early Diagnosis and Advanced Disease Research Group (SEDA), which aims to apply rigorous health service research methods to understanding issues related to cancer diagnosis, supportive care, advanced disease and end of life issues. Professor Una Macleod, Dean of Hull York Medical School and a practising GP herself, believes Joanne’s appointment will enable the school to build on their research in this area and make a real difference to the delivery of primary care in the region and globally.

She says, ‘healthcare is changing, with an increased focus on the delivery of care within a primary and community setting. Primary care research is critical if we are to understand how primary care services are best organised, how to organise and prioritise care, how to introduce and disseminate new practices and how to educate and empower patents to seek the care they need and deserve. I am delighted to welcome Professor Reeve to Hull York Medical School and look forward to working with her and other colleagues across the school to drive understanding and improvements in the development and delivery of high quality primary care’.