EFA

On 17 January in London, EFA President Breda Flood participated in a meeting organised by the International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG) on the topic of difficult to manage asthma. Breda is part of a multi-disciplinary task force that guides IPCRG to produce resources for primary care on this topic. The aim of the meeting was to produce and provide practical guidance for healthcare professionals about how to improve their care of people with difficult to manage asthma, in the context of increasing pressure for health services to deliver value. It also aimed to identify key policy messages necessary to underpin such improvements. Breda was asked to give a presentation on patient perspective, and was also actively engaged in all of the day's sessions. It was a consensus-generating meeting attended by an experienced medical writer who will first produce draft guidance for approval by the task force and then other briefing materials. The final part of the meeting was dedicated to reviewing the implications of the day's discussions for primary care, specialist service provision, service coordination and policy-makers. The intention is to launch the outputs from this work at the 6th IPCRG World Conference in Edinburgh on 25-28 April 2012, and then follow up with further advocacy initiatives if possible