Welcome from Head of Department

Dear Colleagues

I was hoping 2021 would be a different year to 2020 but as we head into another two weeks of hard lockdown in Melbourne, this is clearly not the case. On behalf of our whole Department we would like to send our best wishes to all the General Practices in our network and other Primary Care Clinicians helping with the Covid testing and Covid vaccine roll out. If any good is to come out of this, it is the demonstration of the value general practice and primary health care brings to population health efforts – we are an important component of this pandemic battlefront. We hope you are all succeeding especially in helping all your eligible patients get that vaccination in their arm as we aim for at least a 70 to 80% coverage.

In this issue of the newsletter we have some heart felt commemorations for a valued researcher Dr Paulina Ezer. We also wish to announce A/Professor Palmer’s success in leading the NHMRC ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research –a game changer for primary care mental health service research innovation driven by co-design with people with lived experience. We also celebrate our staff promotions, awards, grants and other achievements and we end with important opportunities for those of you who may want to join us and our colleagues in various research projects.

Please enjoy reading through this newsletter and, as always, thank you for being part of our primary care community and stakeholder network

With best wishes

Lena