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CGPIS update

The Centre for General Practice Integration Studies (CGPIS) was ten years old on 8 March this year. We are celebrating the anniversary by becoming part of a larger grouping, the University of NSW Research Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity (CPHCE).

CPHCE brings CGPIS together with three other groups:

• the Centre for Health Equity Training Research and Evaluation (CHETRE), led for many years by Liz Harris and now coordinated by Lynn Kemp
• the Centre for Equity and Primary Health Research in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven (CEPHRIS), where David Perkins and colleagues are co-located with the Illawarra Division of General Practice
• the Academic Unit of General Practice at Fairfield Hospital , where Nick Zwar and his colleagues have established a strong program of research into general practice and chronic disease.

The new Centre has three main streams of work:

• Prevention and management of chronic disease and associated risk factors . Our work here includes a trial of risk factor management in community health, intervention trials on teamwork in general practice and a trial of diabetes prevention in general practice
• Health system development, with a particular focus on primary health care : This includes work in health services integration, major contributions to primary health care frameworks and policies for NSW Health, and recent work on performance indicators for Divisions and for primary health care
• Understanding health inequalities and intervening to address them , which includes ground breaking work on health impact assessments and the impact of early childhood home visiting and Aboriginal Health.

Working as a larger group will enable us to take a wider view of issues in primary health care, and investigate questions such as:

• What capacity is needed across primary health care as a whole to support effective chronic disease prevention and management/self management, and how can this best be organised?
• If there are separate indicators for general practice and other primary health care sectors, what indicators would measure the contribution of primary health care as a whole to the health of the community?
• What interventions are effective on addressing the determinants of health and at reducing health inequalities.

For further information contact:
Gawaine Powell-Davies
Director
Ph: 02 9385-1506
Mob: 0425-237141
E: g.powell-davies@unsw.edu.au