Inaugural Ann McPherson lecture: young people’s health today — the inconvenient truths for primary care

Abstract

The Inaugural Ann McPherson Memorial lecture was given at the RCGP’s 2012 annual meeting by Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, who was the first Children’s Commissioner for England between 2005–2010. The lecture honours Dr Ann McPherson, an Oxford GP who died in 2011. Ann co-founded the Database of Individual Patient Experiences or ‘DIPEx’ with the aim of providing a resource that would enable patients, families, and health professionals to understand the experience of a variety of health conditions, by watching video clips of people talking about their experiences. Sir Al celebrated Dr McPherson as a tireless health campaigner and founder of websites www.healthtalkonline.org and www.teenagehealthfreak.org, which are dedicated to helping doctors and patients understand each other better. Ann McPherson was an inspirational and relentless champion of the needs of young people. As well as being an outstanding role model for general practice, she was a lovely person who touched the lives of countless people. It is a real privilege for me to be invited to give this inaugural lecture in her memory. What better way to remember her than through The Diary of a Teenage Health Freak? This is the title of her seminal books and website with Aidan Macfarlane that were years ahead of the field in recognising the needs of young people and having reliable answers to the questions they were reluctant or inhibited to ask. It piloted new ways to communicate with them in a format that caught their attention and in a language that appealed to them. She was also a founder member of the Association for Young People’s Health. We have amazing and courageous young people today as exemplified by the Diana Princess of Wales Awards, the success of UK Youth Parliament in ‘taking over’ the House of Commons, and the previous government’s annual ‘Shine’ …