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Supporting the development of GP Consortia in Northwest London

The National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership for Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) for Northwest London recently held a networking event to explore potential links between the NW London CLAHRC and GP Consortia in London. Amongst the speakers were myself; David Stout, Director of the Primary Care Trust Network, NHS Confederation; Dr Alan Cohen, Director of Primary Care, West London Mental Health Trust; Professor Derek Bell, Director, NIHR CLAHRC for Northwest London; and Ganesh Sathyamoorthy, Head of Operations and Delivery, NIHR CLAHRC for Northwest London. My talk at this meeting was on what role public health specialists could play in the new GP consortia. There are a number of areas in which public health specialists could support the new GP consortia, including needs assessment, planning health services, implementing preventive health care programmes, and evaluation of new programmes.

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