York Medical Society Annual Public Oration

Professor Kamila Hawthorne will give the York Medical Society Annual Oration on “Transformation and Change in The National Health Service” Professor Kamila Hawthorne MBE MD FRCGP FRCP FAcadMed (Hon) FLSW FFPH (Hon) DRCOG DCH(Lond) DFFP PG Cert Med Ed Kamila has been a GP in South Wales for 31 years, and a GP for 37 years, having qualified from Somerville College, Oxford in 1984, and completed her GP training in Nottingham in 1988. She grew up in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania. Prior to arriving in South Wales, she was a GP partner in practices in Nottingham and Manchester. She is the immediate past Chair of the Royal College of GPs, having demitted office at the end of November 2025. She is on the Trustee Boards of the Kings Fund, and Moondance Cancer Initiative, the Chair of Trustee Board for two charities, the National Academy of Social Prescribing, and Pathway (health inclusion for homeless people). She is the patron of Health Literacy UK. She is also a Bevan Commissioner and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. Her research and clinical working interests have been in health inequalities and access to health services, (her MD was based on link-worker-led culturally appropriate health education for BAME patient groups with Type 2 diabetes in Nottingham, Manchester and Cardiff). With wide experience of general practice and running community projects in diabetes and heart disease, she has been named ‘GP of the Year’ twice, Woman of the Year 2024 at the GG2 Leadership and Diversity Awards and was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to General Practice. She has been an MRCGP Examiner for 26 years. More recently, she has been Head of the Graduate Entry Medicine programme at Swansea University (2019-2022). Kamila is now retired from clinical general practice, but is keeping very busy with her charitable activities, gardening and spending time with her grandson.