Event Details

"Which comes first: the chicken or the egg? Does it matter? Probably not. Which comes first: theory or practice? Does it matter? In this presentation, I will argue that yes, the answer to this second conundrum really does matter to the future of clinical research and clinical practice."

Iona Heath worked as an inner city general practitioner at the Caversham Group Practice in Kentish Town in London from 1975 until 2010, caring for a mostly disadvantaged and hugely ethnically diverse population. She was a nationally elected member of the Council of the UK Royal College of General Practitioners from 1989 to 2010 and chaired the College’s Committee on Medical Ethics from 1998 to 2004 and the International Committee from 2006 to 2009. She was elected President of the Royal College of General Practitioners for a three year term from 2009 to 2012.

In 2011, she was the first woman to give the Harveian Oration to the Royal College of Physicians since its inauguration in 1656.

She wrote a regular Op Ed column for the British Medical Journal for eight years and has contributed essays to many other medical journals across the world. She has been particularly interested to explore the nature of general practice, the importance of medical generalism, issues of justice and liberty in relation to health care, the corrosive influence of the medical industrial complex and the commercialisation of medicine, and the challenges posed by disease-mongering, the care of the dying, and violence within families. Her book Matters of Life and Death was published in 2007 and has been translated into Italian and Spanish. Her book Contra il Mercato della Salutewas published in Italian in 2016.