London Journal of Primary Care - a PAUSE.

Abstract

This is the penultimate Issue of LJPC. In August, we will PAUSE to consider a new stage. LJPC started in 2008, the year of the 60th anniversary of the UK National Health Service (NHS) and the 30th anniversary of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Alma Ata Declaration. Both the NHS and WHO advocate whole system collaboration for a healthy society. This means much more than medical care. It means integrating multiple efforts to build local health communities, including self-care, shared-care and health promotion, as well as curative medicine. How to practically do this is the question that has dominated LJPC thinking ever since. In the last 10 years, LJPC has published over 300 papers about how to achieve the WHO/NHS vision of community-oriented integrated care and health promotion. Papers have evaluated systems of care and described what health means in complex situations. John Horder, one of the most visionary general practitioners of all time, serialised his autobiography in LJPC. In particular, LJPC has co-produced papers, bringing together many different perspectives to explore wicked problems. London Journal of Primary Care has now outgrown its origins. It has expanded beyond London to become an international, peer-reviewed, PubMed-cited journal. It is a social movement more than a journal. It is concerned with whole society health as well as primary care. So we have chosen to close the journal in its present form and offer what we have learned to others who might want to lead a next stage(s). We think of it as a PAUSE. The LJPC website will remain and the papers will also be available on the RCGP website as well as on PubMed. This Issue reveals the breadth of LJPC interests. It includes: John Ashton’s Lecture at Manchester Medical Society on 31st January 2018 reminds us that the NHS was never meant to be the only thing to improve the health of the population, but ‘one part only of an attack upon five giant evils: Physical Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness’. [1]. John reminds us that the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 agrees with NHS principles. It underpins WHO strategy for health care