Dr Maria-Pilar Astier-Peña: Candidancy for Member at Large WONCA Council 2021-2023

This video introduces Dr. María Pilar Astier Peña's candidacy to opt for the position of Member at large WONCA, with a special interest in the WHO Liaison position. She works as a frontline family doctor in a public health center, Universitas, in Zaragoza (Spain). She is an associated professor at the Medical School of the University of Zaragoza. She belongs to the Spanish Society for Family and Community Medicine (Semfyc). She has been chairing the Semfyc patient safety working party since 2010. Though Semfyc, she had acknowledged WONCA. She first joined EQUIP (European Society for Quality and Safety in Family Medicine) of WONCA Europe. She has been participating in EQUIP meetings, workshops,s and research projects as PRICOV Study. She actively participated in WONCA conferences both at the European and global levels. Her commitment to WONCA has led her to opt for and lead the quality and safety in family medicine working party (@WONCA_QSafety) for the last 4 years. She also participated in activities organized by the working parties of education, woman and family medicine, and emergency and activities of the Special Interest Groups such as Health Equity, Quaternary Prevention. She has joined WONCA Environment WP and supported the launch of the Planetary Health for Primary Care course. She believes that family doctors have a very important community role in promoting green and sustainable behaviors among our patients, being ourselves an example to walk towards improving the health of the planet. She has the conviction that collaborative work between the different working parties and special interest groups is essential to generate synergies for learning and improvement in Family Medicine. As Quality and Safety WP chair, she is actively participating in an exciting project on the development of an accreditation model for health centres by WONCA. How is she going to represent you, family doctor? 1. Strengthening Wonca WP and SIF which make an extraordinary work sharing their knowledge to improve family medicine in conferences and workshops. 2. Doing family medicine advocacy 3. Sharing her knowledge and expertise to strengthen the Family Medicine role as a crucial stakeholder in WHO where she's been participating in the promotion and launching of Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030. 4. As a frontline family doctor involved in quality and patient safety issues, she wants to share her experience on improving quality standards in family medicine practices. 5. Essential that “safe health workers lead to safer patients” so she is really concerned about improving family doctors’ health and well-being as a crucial element for safe healthcare. Pandemic is having a global impact on people’s way of life. In many countries, there are people without access to healthcare. Primary care services bring the opportunity to access universal health coverage through strong, quality, and fair primary care for every citizen. We need an adequate investment in human resources, infrastructures, and increasing the capability of diagnosis in primary care. We need to develop health information systems as well connected to hospital care, public health, nursing homes, pharmacists… to guarantee coordinated care. All those challenges need to keep updated and well trained and to introduce new skills. So, I am concerned with the need to teach and facilitate access to online training and education to empower family doctors. She is learning from many healthcare professionals around the world. She is very grateful for it. She counts on all of you to join the project "leaving no one behind." Thank you very much