New JPHC co-editors announced
In a first for the College’s Journal of Primary Health Care (JPHC), Professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith and Professor Tim Stokes have been appointed as co-editors to manage and review the journal’s content.
Regular readers of the Journal will recognise Prof Goodyear-Smith’s name in the editorial space, as she was the founding Editor-in-Chief between 2009 and 2015.
In their joint application for the role, Profs Goodyear-Smith and Stokes called the JPHC a, “taonga of the College, and of the primary health care community in Aotearoa New Zealand as well as the broader Pacific region.”
They outlined how they would work together to keep the journal relevant for GPs and make it one of the most respected and well-cited primary health care journals in the world. This includes:
- Reinstating an editorial board with representation from relevant disciplines and across New Zealand’s universities to provided strong advice and governance to the co-editors.
- Strengthening the Journal’s commitment to Māori and Pasifika health advancements by having strong Māori and Pasifika representation on the Editorial Board.
- Collating and reporting on journal metrics.
- Reinstating guest editorials from international experts discussing the leading research article in each issue.
- Surveying the membership on the relevance of the columns currently in the Journal.
Prof Goodyear-Smith intends to step down once the Journal has been refreshed and the above proposals are implemented. This will allow another primary health care academic to come on board as deputy editor to work alongside Prof Stokes.
Prof Goodyear-Smith says, “I am looking forward to working with Tim to refresh the Journal, and to mentor a more junior colleague as deputy editor to ensure succession planning.”
Prof Stokes says, “I love three things about my job: being a GP as well as an academic, collaborating with others to do research, and writing academic papers. So, co-editorship of the Journal is a great fit. I’m really looking forward to working with Felicity, the associate editors and the College team to take the Journal forward.”
They also acknowledged the work and the advancement of the Journal under outgoing editor Professor Sue Dovey, who has held the role for the past seven years.
About Prof Goodyear-Smith
Prof Goodyear-Smith obtained College Fellowship in 1998 and was awarded Distinguished Fellowship of the College in 2016. In 2021, she was awarded Fellowship of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) for her outstanding contribution to the College of GPs and the discipline of general practice on a local and international scale.
She is a senior academic involved in teaching and research at the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care in the School of Population Heath at The University of Auckland.
Prof Goodyear-Smith has also worked in the UK, and in Jamaica. Whilst in Jamaica, she spent time working as a police medical officer as well as in obstetrics & gynaecology and family planning. Her expertise has been recognised with Fellowship in the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine at The Royal College of Physicians.
Prof Goodyear-Smith’s research interest areas include international primary health care, including cross-country comparisons in low- and middle-income countries, screening and intervention for mental health and risky lifestyle behaviours, immunisation, and co-design and Pacific methodologies. She has been very involved in WONCA, chairing their Working Party on Research, and has co-edited three books, International Perspectives on Primary Care Research, How to do Primary.
About Prof Tim Stokes
Prof Stokes is the Elaine Gurr Professor of General Practice in the Department of General Practice and Rural Health at Otago University, co-Director of the Centre for Health Systems and Technology, and a part-time GP in Dunedin.
Prior to his move to New Zealand, he was the Senior Clinical Lecturer in Primary Care at the University of Birmingham, Consultant Clinical Adviser at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), visiting Professor at the Universities of Leicester and Leeds, and Lecturer /Senior Lecturer in General Practice at the University of Leicester.
Prof Stokes undertakes research on health care delivery and implementation and is interested in news ways of delivering health services for acute and chronic clinical conditions in primary care across primary and secondary care, evaluating complex health system interventions including whether and how collaborative partnerships working in New Zealand’s health system can improve service integration and health outcomes.
The Journal of Primary Health Care (JPHC) is the College’s academic online journal that contains peer-reviewed research that is relevant to general practice and can be found on the College website.
