Strategy
Strategy
Our vision is of SAPC sustaining, supporting and developing the discipline of academic primary care, which in turn drives improvements in primary care, for the benefit of patients and the wider community.
Academic primary care is integral to high quality primary care, and we see SAPC sitting at the heart of the wider primary care community. To achieve our overarching vision for SAPC, we consider there to be three key goals for the Society.
Championing a vision of advancing primary care through education and research
Building and supporting a vibrant academic primary care workforce
Creating impact through supporting collaborative action
By fostering high quality primary care education and research, underpinned by a strong academic workforce, we hope to be able to work effectively with partners in practice, policy and the wider community to improve the quality of primary care both in the UK and beyond.
Strategic priorities
Aligned with our over-arching vision, SAPC has a number of specific strategic priorities to inform the direction of travel of the Society, including supporting our charitable ambitions and working more closely with partners such as RCGP. The Priorities also inform a range of other activities including investment, partnerships, conference planning, and educational and training.
The Priorities are revisited every 3 years aligning with the mid-term of a new Chair, providing both time for new leadership to make an informed decision on any revisions and to provide continuity across Chair terms. All priorities are agreed by the SAPC Executive. Specific actions to help achieve each Priority are outlined in our Strategy Document.
The current Priorities listed below took effect from 1 January 2024.
Priority 1: Growing academic primary care
The overarching aim of SAPC is to ensure academic primary care has a strong presence in the UK, in turn leading to improving primary care by providing a deeper understanding of primary care including its aims and relevance; developing, delivering and evaluating ways of delivering primary care policy and practice; and delivering critical commentary and evidence on how wider policy and practice impacts on the provision of primary care. To achieve this requires an enthusiastic, dynamic, knowledgeable and multidisciplinary academic community. Furthermore, primary care is currently facing substantial challenges, with an increasing workload compounded by a crisis of recruitment and retention in the workforce. As highlighted by the Wass report in 2016, the lack of “academic status” within general practice is a critical barrier to engagement with the specialty. Academic primary care offers an opportunity to increase attractiveness of general practice as a speciality, as well as supporting portfolio careers for those existing clinicians wishing to diversify their interests.
Priority 2: Improving sustainable healthcare
Sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It has three interdependent dimensions: environment, society, and economy. It is widely recognised that delivery of health services must be done in a more sustainable manner. The provision of medical care incurs significant environmental costs, including greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, and changes to land use. These may have direct adverse consequences for personal and public health (e.g. antimicrobial resistance, malnutrition) or indirect economic or social consequences. The financial costs of health care may also divert resources from other health-sustaining investment in education, social welfare and housing. Academic primary care has an important role to play in delivering effective research and education to understand and mitigate these risks and harms.
Priority 3: Addressing health inequalities
Health inequalities are unfair, avoidable differences in health and healthcare outcomes between different groups within our communities. A number of factors drive health inequalities, such as socioeconomic deprivation, and marginalisation based on social-group membership (e.g. LGBTQIA+). Measures of health inequalities, such as differences in life expectancy, demonstrate pervasive and, in some cases, growing divides between disadvantaged groups and the wider community. For decades, primary care has been at the forefront of identifying and leading change to address inequalities, with mixed success. Key to sustained delivery of successful initiatives is the robust study of interventions intended to address health inequalities to inform policy and strategy.