If you are interested in becoming a Health Inequalities Fellow, please do get in touch with us.
Current Health Inequality Fellows:
Dr Paul Hanlon
Dr Josh Nowak
I am a GP working at Shirehampton Group Practice, a member of the Northern Arc Primary Care Network, and I have an interest in cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and lipid optimisation. As the largest cause of premature mortality in deprived areas across the UK, I want to use my Health Inequality Fellowship to provide enhanced support for people at risk of CVD.
I aim to undertake a project identifying those most at risk of CVD and providing them with earlier intervention through health education, lifestyle change and medication optimisation where indicated. This will include searching for people with possible Familial Hypercholesterolaemia and offering them optimal lipid-lowering therapies and specialist referral where appropriate. I hope this can contribute to wider CVD prevention work across the BNSSG area, with focus on those populations in most need of support.
Dr India Wheeler
Continuity of care improves medical outcomes, patient experience and clinician wellbeing. There is evidence that being from an ethnic minority identity group and socioeconomic deprivation is associated with poorer continuity of care which could lead to worse health outcomes. In current healthcare systems with part time working and large patient list sizes it is difficult to know how best to provide good quality of continuity. This is something I intend to explore during my fellowship.
I work at Charlotte Keel Medical Practice an inner-city practice that serves an extremely diverse predominantly deprived patient group. We have implemented a micro-teams model to try and improve continuity of care. During the next 12 months I will evaluate this current model, identify barriers to it’s use with the aim of rolling it out to the entire patient population (approx. 20,000 patients). I will also investigate other potential benefits and outcomes of this model such as patient/clinician satisfaction and out of hours use. This work will be collaborative with other Deep End Practices to share ideas and expertise with the hope of improving continuity across the Deep End Network.
Dr Vicky Pitts
I’m a GP working in Knowle West, an area of significant deprivation in South Bristol, with particular interests in women’s health and safeguarding. I’m passionate about improving the health and opportunities for our patients, and delighted to have been awared a Health Inequalities Fellowship, which will allow me to work on a project with this aim.
My focus will be improving perimenopausal care. This is a fashionable topic in more affluent areas and studies are increasingly showing that HRT can be beneficial for many women, but the benefits haven’t reached more deprived areas with prescribing rates being significantly lower. I’m interested in empowering women by helping them to gain the knowledge, confidence and desire to manage their own health and to make informed decisions about their care.
Dr Amy Wells
Dr Bekki Stone
Hi, I’m Bekki. I am a GP partner at Downton Road surgery.
Downton Road surgery is a newly merged practice. We were formally known as Merrywood and Crest surgeries just 6 months ago. Combined we are have the fourth and fifth highest rates of deprivation in the BNSSG area.
I am really excited to have been awarded the fellowship. I hope to use this as an opportunity to raise awareness of what I believe to be the biggest driver of poor health of our time. Malnutrition amongst excess, otherwise known as the obesity epidemic. This is impacting all of us, but is having its greatest impact in areas of deprivation due to numerous factors. I believe a major factor in this is poor education. This includes mixed media messages, lack of education amongst professionals and an enormous lack of preventative services.
I plan to create Downton Road friendly educational resources, whilst networking across the BNSSG to discover what is being done well and hopefully re-create this. And hopefully change some lives for the better in the process!
Dr Miriam Khan
I am a GP working at Montpelier Health Centre in Inner City Bristol and a trustee at Changes Bristol a local mental health charity .
Alongside my clinical role I work within the voluntary sector with statutory and grassroot organisations in Bristol with the aim of trying to reducing health inequalities amongst people from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
The focus of my fellowship will be to look at interventions to get patients from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds to engage with mental health services for anxiety, depression and post traumatic stress disorder. We have a large migrant population in Bristol and looking at how we can improve trauma informed practice will also be another area of focus. At a practice level I will be reviewing patients who are diagnosed with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) from black and ethnic minority backgrounds and inviting them to a weekly clinic for their annual NHS physical health check.
Previous Health Inequality Fellows:
Dr Alice Holmes
I am dedicating my fellowship time to focusing on Trauma-informed care; a model of service improvement which supports patients and staff (many of whom have a history of trauma whether personal or vicarious) and which hopes to improve patient and staff experiences of healthcare.
I am doing some service evaluation with the trauma-informed systems manager from the ICB, with the hope that our findings and progress can support other practices. I am also supporting a researcher at the University of Bristol with her study into Trauma-Informed transformation in General Practice.
I work in Lawrence Hill in Central Bristol. We have a diverse practice population with a high index of multiple deprivation.
Deep End Health Inequalities Fellowship: Trauma-Informed Care – Dr Alice Holmes
Dr Andrew Cummings
I am the newly appointed clinical lead at Pier Health Group Ltd, a dual site practice made up of Horizon Health Centre and Graham Road Surgery, some of the poorest serving surgeries in BNSSG. Inequalities medicine, long term conditions and education are my main interest areas.
Within the timeframe of ICB fellowship I am developing a high quality, long term condition delivery plan alongside my team for respiratory, diabetes, cardiovascular medicine and palliative care. I am also the educational lead for the newly qualified GP program in our PCN superpartnership Pier Health Group . My remaining time for the health inequality fellowship will be spent developing our bespoke Pier Fellowship program for newly qualified GPs and acting as education supervisor to our fellows to aim to increase recruitment and retention working in this very deprived area.
Deep End Health Inequalities Fellowship: Recruitment Presentation – Dr Andrew Cummings
Dr Jessica Wynter-Bee
The climate crisis is a health crisis, and it will impact those with the least, the most. I am therefore using my fellowship time to set up a ‘Primary Care Climate Resilience Team’ which will help our healthcare system mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. As part of this work, I am developing inhaler, medicines waste and deprescribing projects and developing a website to link patients with local groups and resources.
I work at Charlotte Keel Medical Practice, a thriving inner-city practice with patients from all over the world and all walks of life. I am using the fellowship to show how an urban practice in an area of high-deprivation can reach net-zero and create a ‘healthy lifestyles’ culture for all our patients and staff, especially for groups who might find it harder to access healthcare.
Deep End Health Inequalities Fellowship Presentation – Dr Jessica Wynter-Bee
Dr Karun Kothapalli
I have been working as a General practitioner at Hartcliffe area in south Bristol. Hartwood ranks 25th out of all 6700 practices in England for deprivation. Hartwood is the 7th most deprived practice out of all 6700 practices in England for child deprivation and has the most deprived population of children in BNSSG.
I am utilising this fellowship time to help me to get in-depth knowledge on tackling health inequalities, which will equip me to develop the skills, experience and resilience to continue working in these challenging, but rewarding environments and to help patients to improve and receive the highest standard of care.
I am very grateful for this exciting Health inequality fellowship opportunity, which helped me to develop my interest in primary care research projects. During the time of Fellowship, I am building my research interest by developing and supporting primary care research and quality improvement projects. I am presently working on the CHiP study which looks into health inequalities experienced by housebound patients as well as the care for housebound patients during the pandemic. I have also started a health screening programme in our practice which will help to reduce health inequality in our patients, including screening for early prostate cancer in high risk patients.
Health Inequalities Fellowship Presentation – Dr Karun Kothapalli
Dr Vishal Ram
I am one of the Health Inequalities Fellows focussing on supporting our drug-dependent patients and improving their access to health care. I recognise that ‘a one size fits all’ Primary Care model does not meet the needs of all our patients, especially those in deprived areas suffering with and recovering from drug addiction. I am therefore working closely with our Bristol Drugs Project Recovery Workers in hope to create an ‘Open Doors Clinic’ that provides flexible, wrap-around care. I hope to better address unmet physical and mental health needs and improve health outcomes for this marginalised group. I am based at Charlotte Keel Medical Practice in Easton, which works to serve an extremely diverse but predominantly deprived patient group in the Bristol inner city.
Dr David Peel
I am a GP in Knowle West South Bristol, working with a great team in an area of significant need and deprivation, with interests in diabetes, CVD, dermatology and minor surgery. I have 20 years’ experience as a GP Partner running a busy successful practice in Bedminster, and have been involved in commissioning and local GP development since 2010. I am currently the Clinical Lead in Planned Care working with OneCare, the local GP CIC.
I joined the Deep End GP Programme in April 2023 and am running a project looking at modifiable barriers to good control of T2 Diabetes, the Deep End Diabetes project. I am looking forward to helping the programme increase the profile and resourcing for practices working in areas of significant need.