Helen Stokes portrait

Chair of Royal College of GPs to give Foundation Day Lecture

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), will give the University’s annual Foundation Day Lecture on Friday 27 September.

The title of Professor Stokes-Lampard’s lecture is ‘Healthcare Now and For The Future’. It will take place in the Gulbenkian Theatre on the University’s Canterbury campus 6pm – 7pm. It is free and open to all with no booking required but seating will be on a first-come basis.

The Foundation Day Lecture celebrates the University’s many achievements since receiving its Royal Charter in 1965.

Professor Chris Holland, Dean of the new Kent and Medway Medical School, a collaboration between the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University, said: ‘I am delighted that Helen will be giving this year’s lecture. She has been an exciting and inspirational leader and role model for General Practice. She embodies the vision of contemporary General Practice that will encourage our future graduates to consider this route as a career.’

The RCGP is the UK’s largest Medical Royal College, representing over 52,000 family doctors across the UK and internationally. The Chair shapes policy and leads the strategy of the College, working with politicians, policy makers and the media to ensure that the ‘voice’ of general practice and GPs is understood and represented.

During her time as Chair Professor Lampard-Stokes has built alliances and collaborated across the breadth of health and social care with the aim of improving the working life for GP’s and insuring the highest possible standards of care for all.

She is a part-time GP partner at a practice in Staffordshire and a professor in the Medical School at the University of Birmingham (Chair of Undergraduate GP Education).

Prior to training as a GP, she worked in Obstetrics and Gynaecology for several years and this experience shaped her clinical and academic aspirations. She was a personal mentor for doctors in difficulty in the Midlands until 2016, a scheme supported by the West Midlands Deanery and RCGP Midland Faculty.