KHPeople: Prof Mark Ashworth

What is your role within King’s Health Partners?  

My role as Professor of Primary Care is to lead on primary care research within the ‘School of Life Course and Population Sciences’, King’s College London (KCL). I’m particularly keen that this research is inclusive, reaching out to local primary care in south-east London. I want to involve local primary care in the research and really make sure that the research we do is relevant for our own primary care community.

As part of my work, I collaborate with the primary care team at King’s Health Partners which gives us researchers an invaluable NHS-KCL link so that we can develop this two-way dialogue.   

What do you enjoy most about your role?  

I really enjoy being able to use precious data from primary care (fully anonymised) to be able to study health inequalities in using both local and national primary care data. These have been much greater than ever I imagined. 

In just one example, we looked at multimorbidity and found that 25% of the White ethnicity population in primary care had multimorbidity. But looking in more detail, we found that 54% of Black Caribbean ethnicity women had multimorbidity. The impact of this high multimorbidity rate is huge.   

What inspired you to get into this work?  

I have been inspired to get into this work after 30 years of working in clinical primary care. I will always remain a GP at heart and that exposure to day-to-day clinical life has stimulated so many research ideas. Plus, it gives me that sense of responsibility that I need to make sure my own research makes sense within a GP setting, at what is often called ‘the coalface’.  

What are the benefits of working in partnership?  

I work with a team of researchers. Some are clinical and some non-clinical. I learn from both – such as the fine arts of health economics from my colleagues in the health economics team. This collaboration has been so important in our multimorbidity research as the health economists showed us the incredibly high rates of primary care consultations which are required to provide good quality care to multimorbidity patients. Especially as these patients tend to accumulate more and more Long Term Conditions.  

I also take pride in working with my clinical research colleagues as we need to develop the next generation of clinical academics to really strengthen our profession.  

What would be your one career top tip?  

Primary care is such a privilege, so full of a richness of career possibilities. Spread your wings – and find your own sweet spot.  

Watch Prof Ashworth’s recent primary care webinar on the KHP Learning Hub, visit the homepage here.