Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx) Blog
Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx) Blog
Posted by ma403
4 April 2025I’ve always enjoyed the regional SAPC conferences. Being very much at the smaller end of the conference spectrum, they are a great way to find out what’s going on in the local region, and offer an opportunity for early career researchers in particular to present work in a friendly and relaxed environment.
The 2025 meeting was organised by Oxford in the beautiful setting of a very sunny Keble College. Apparently in the past, the neo-gothic red-brick buildings attracted criticism from many quarters, with descriptions including “ugly” and “monstrosities”. I’m not quite sure most of us attending the conference would agree. The chapel (including the Holman Hunt painting The Light of the World) and the Hogwarts-esque Hall are spectacular. Of interest, both were funded by philanthropist William Gibbs, renown from having made his fortune selling, to put it bluntly, bird shit.
William Gibbs’ rise to become the “richest non-noble man in England” perhaps links tenuously with the subject matter of equity and diversity which formed the theme for the conference. We were lucky to hear from three fantastic keynote speakers. Bristol’s Lucy Potter talked about severe and multiple disadvantage, which describes the intersection between a number of issues including severe mental illness, homelessness, and abuse. I was particularly struck by the mention of the “curb cut” strategy, focusing from the offset on helping the most disadvantaged, rather than fixing things for the majority in the vain hope that benefits might trickle down to those most in need. Caroline Mitchell from Keele addressed the cleverly entitled topic “evidenced biased medicine”. She reflected on some of the fantastic Deep End and participatory work that she has been involved with in Sheffield, but also challenged us on the huge problem of anti-science scepticism arising in parallel with Trumpism, alongside non-political risks such as black-box biases from AI and “fast-science”. The closing keynote from UCL’s Katherine Woolf discussed growing and diversifying the UK medical workforce. The key message: diversification is improving, but we still have work to do.
The parallel scientific sessions covered a wide range of interesting topics. I attended sessions on Big Data, Multimorbidity and polypharmacy, Diagnostic and monitoring tools, and Treatment choices. Particular highlights for me included learning more about the role of fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) to facilitate asthma management, as part of Southampton’s DEFINE programme (not just interesting from an academic perspective, but a useful update for me as a clinician); and the interesting work being undertaken by the QResearch team looking at the role of routine blood tests as a predictor of liver cancer. I was also delighted to see a great showing from the Exeter team, and enjoyed hearing Osei Asibey Owusu discussing a systematic review conducted as part of the STANDD project looking for studies reporting the association between standing blood pressure and cardiovascular outcome (summary: there aren’t any), Mary Carter discussing barriers to memantine use for dementia management (something we are hoping to get funding to pursue further), and my PhD student Tom Kallis presenting his work on how pharmacists navigate clinical uncertainty when reviewing complex polypharmacy (an answer including wind, an anchor, and a desert island). I’m sorry I couldn’t get to the other oral presentations, but I believe Amy, Judit, Sarah and Stella did us proud!
In summary – a most enjoyable couple of days. I had a bit too much to drink, was too lazy to participate in the fun run, and was too technophobic to engage in the treasure hunt. But it was great to catch up with friends and colleagues, meet some of the budding primary care academic leaders of the future, and to see some of the fantastic primary care research which is happening in the South West. I’m excited for the 2026 edition!
Rupert Payne
Co-Chair of SAPC, and Professor of Primary Care and Clinical Pharmacology