A University of Bristol Professor of Primary Health Care and an NIHR Senior Investigator has been awarded the George Abercrombie Award for his outstanding contributions to the literature of general practice.
Professor Chris Salisbury has been given the the award by the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). It is one of the college’s most senior awards and awarded ‘from time to time for special meritorious literary work in general practice’.
Professor Salisbury said: “I’m delighted to receive this award, but research is always a team effort. I’ve had the privilege to work with many fantastic teams over the last 30 years. Almost everything I’ve written has been based on their work, and also on numerous stimulating conversations with colleagues.”
Professor Salisbury has published five books and over 230 research papers on the broad topic of how to improve provision of primary care. He has conducted several high-profile evaluations of new models of care, such as changes in out-of-hours arrangements, NHS walk-in centres, GPs with Special Interests, telehealth for chronic disease management, and the potential of new forms of consultation such as e-consultations. In recent years he has focused on how health care should address the challenge of the growing number of people with multiple long term health conditions (also known as multimorbidity).
He was one of the first to recognise the tension between the increasing standardisation of care for individual chronic diseases, while the ageing population means that many people have several conditions at one time. He conducted the first study of the epidemiology of multimorbidity in the UK, along with systematic reviews on the prevalence, outcomes and measurement of multimorbidity.
Professor Salisbury has championed the case for providing more person-centred care for patients with multimorbidity. He has developed and evaluated interventions to improve chronic disease management, including the largest ever trial of an intervention for patients with multimorbidity – the 3D trial. The findings from this trial were published in The Lancet in 2018.
He co-chaired the joint MRC-NIHR call for research on multimorbidity, was a member of the RCGP patient-centred care commission, and a member of the Taskforce on Multiple Conditions established by the Richmond Group of Charities. He is currently co-leading a study of how to improve the implementation of person-centred care in general practice for patients with multimorbidity.
Professor Salisbury has been a board member for the NIHR Health Services & Delivery Research programme and the NIHR School for Primary Care Research, chair of the RCGP Scientific Foundation Board and RCGP Research Paper of the Year Panel, and a member of several other national and international boards and advisory bodies. He has also been a member of the NIHR Advanced Fellowships Panel. In December 2018 he gave the prestigious James Mackenzie lecture at the RCGP AGM, entitled ‘Designing health care for the people who need it’.
George Abercrombie was the first president of the RCGP when it was established in 1952, and this award was established in his honour.
Professor Salisbury will be presented with a medal at a RCGP event in September.
