New RCGP chair elected
A GP and academic from Wales has been elected as the next chair of the Royal College of GPs.
Kamila Hawthorne will serve a three-year term from November 2022, replacing Martin Marshall who has been appointed chair of think tank Nuffield Trust.
Professor Hawthorne is a salaried GP in Mountain Ash, South Wales, and the head of graduate entry medicine at Swansea University. She also provides expert advice at Welsh think tank Bevan Commission.
She is also currently provost of the SE Wales Faculty of the RCGP and sits on the college’s trustee board and ethics committee. She was vice chair (professional development) of the college between 2015 – 2018, and will be the RCGP’s fifth female chair.
She said: “I am honoured to be elected as the next chair of the RCGP.
“I will do everything possible over the next three years to make sure our professional voice is a strong one and to ensure that politicians, policy makers, and influencers, including the media, understand and appreciate the work that GPs do; the importance and quality of the care we deliver to our patients, and the immense contribution we make to the wider NHS.
“I would also like to pay tribute to our current chair, Martin Marshall, who has done a magnificent job of leading our college and our profession through the turbulence of the pandemic and who leaves such a strong legacy to build on.”
Professor Hawthorne moved to Britain from Tanzania in 1970, qualifying from Somerville College, Oxford, in 1984. She has been a GP principal in Nottingham, Manchester and Cardiff and, in 2017, was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours for services to general practice and her work on culturally appropriate diabetes health education with minority ethnic communities and their GP practices in Cardiff.
The chair of council at the RCGP is the leader of the college and sets its strategic direction and policy.