Equality Diversity and Inclusion

SAPC is committed to working inclusively with and for our community. This year, we have established a specific stream of work to look into equality, diversity and inclusion within SAPC and in academic primary care more broadly. The first step of this was to draft a strategy, which we share below. This is the first draft and we would like to consult our membership and seek your feedback. A word document is available to download and use accessibly or with tracked changes at the bottom of this page. Please email Office@sapc.ac.uk with any comments or feedback by 20th June 2022.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Workstream

Background: SAPC started as the association of university teachers of general practice (AUTGP) at a meeting in Cardiff in 1972. Since then it has grown and evolved to encompass the wider scholarly work undertaken in the field, and the AUTGP was renamed the Society for Academic Primary Care (SAPC) in 2000. SAPC works with national (e.g. RCGP, NIHR) and international (e.g. NAPCRG, AAAPC) organisations… The

society’s three key goals:

1. to champion a vision of advancing primary care through education and research
2. to build and support a vibrant Academic Primary Care (APC) workforce and
3. to create and sustain impact through collaborative action. 

We aim to achieve these goals through Raising the profile of (APC) - a distinct discipline driving improvement in primary care through scholarship

Diversity Mission Statement Headline: Excellence in Primary Care for All

SAPC are committed to supporting excellence in Primary Care Scholarship, and we believe that a diverse and inclusive approach to membership is key to success in this. Our ambition is to have a membership that reflects the diverse nature of Primary Care and those that it serves. We feel there is much strength in utilising differences in our backgrounds and the varied ideas that we bring, to advance the agenda and quality of Primary Care research and teaching.   

In order to support, build and sustain the academic primary care workforce, we first need to understand the make-up of our membership. Learning from other allied initiatives (e.g. Athena SWAN) we know that data is a key component of EDI, and core to understanding the impact of actions taken. 

Questions that may drive our ED&I workstream:

1. Are we as a society and community able to recruit, support and retain people from diverse backgrounds to clinical and non-clinical (PHoCuS) roles?
2. Are our opportunities equally open to all, including committee and leadership positions? Does the makeup of these committees / positions reflect wider community makeup?
3. Do our ways of working and communicating reflect our values with regards to promoting equality and inclusion, and celebrating diversity?

As part of our work, we need to consider and decide:

1. What we want and need to know, and how we will collect this information.
2. Have a clearly stated intention for our ED&I work, and for the data collection, and a strategy for sharing learning that comes from this work.
3. Ensure that the data we collect is secure, sufficiently anonymised, and yet is robust and comparable across institutions and settings.
4. How the data will inform practical recommendations, and how these

It is timely that SAPC will convene a working group for the ‘MacKenzie 3’ project, that will look at exploring and understanding the current state of play with regards to the academic primary care workforce in the UK. This project should be sensible of the principles and aims outlined herein.

Word document to download

Sudeh Cheraghi-Sohi & Duncan Shrewsbury, Feb. 2022