From Academic Research to Global Leadership: Türkiye's First Recipient Champions Preventive Health, Digital Integration, and the Future of Family Medicine
“I applied to sustain high-impact academic growth, structured mentorship, and international collaboration. These areas often limited by financial barriers”
“We are pleased to announce that some of the research we initiated with EYFDM Digital health and artificial intelligence SIG leaders has now been published, and that some of our projects are nearing completion”
The WONCA Europe Scholarship Awards are a prestigious program dedicated to supporting future leaders in Family Medicine. WONCA Europe is proud to celebrate this year's outstanding recipient, Dr. İkbal Hümay Arman from Türkiye.
Dr. Arman has already demonstrated exceptional commitment to the specialty, and WONCA Europe is thrilled to support her continuing professional growth.
To learn more about Dr. Arman's journey, WONCA Europe conducted an in-depth interview, asking them to discuss their career to date, their personal motivation for applying to the awards, and their exciting plans for utilizing the scholarship funds. Additionally, Dr. Arman shared the story of a family medicine doctor who has inspired her. These valuable insights are available for viewing as video interviews and a written report, with all the footage and responses compiled by Dr. Charlotte Morris, the WONCA Europe EYFDM Liaison Officer.
Interview with Dr Arman:
Q1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your career
I’m a family medicine specialist and early-career academic. I work as an assistant professor at Istanbul Medipol University, in Istanbul, Türkiye. I have been an active member since the beginning of my medical journey in national and international organizations. I am passionate about comprehensive, preventive, and person-centred care. I’m completing a PhD in Public Health this year; my thesis analyses national survey data to understand determinants of preventive service use. And my family medicine training programme dissertation tested an intervention to reduce unnecessary paediatric ED visits. Now, I teach history-taking, OSCE skills, communication, medicine and humanities courses in school of medicine, I guide family medicine trainees, I design learning materials that translate evidence into everyday practice. And I am keen to integrate digital health and artificial intelligence in family doctor’s daily practice. I’ve presented many papers across WONCA and its networks, and I have published internationally, building collaborations that connect research, education, and policy.
Q2. Why did you apply for the WONCA scholarship?
I applied to sustain high-impact academic growth, structured mentorship, and international collaboration. These areas are often limited by financial barriers. As the first recipient from Türkiye, I aim to represent my country, try to widen access for young colleagues, and translate preventive-care research into practice across Europe. I am hopeful that the WONCA Europe Scholarship will support my development in both my professional and organizational capacities. The removal of key barriers to international collaboration and advanced training would be a significant benefit, as would the structured support and visibility that would help to turn promising projects into tools that are transferable across multiple countries.
Q3. Have you been involved with WONCA or the European Young Family Doctors movement before? Can you tell us about this?
My WONCA journey first began at the start of my training via EYFDM (VdGM at the time). It was at the VdGM forum in Porto, Portugal, in 2018 that I first became aware of the potential of international collaboration and the value of a supporting community. I serve as EYFDM Türkiye Campaign-Policy Coordinator for the past six years (2019-2025) and EYFDM Executive Board Events Officer (2022-2025), and contributed to the Good Governance Committee (2021–2024). I have been a founding member and immediate past co-leader of Digital Health and Artificial intelligence special interest group of EYFDM (2024-2025), this is the most popular SIG in EYFDM at the moment. I’ve contributed to host committees, helped standardize event processes, and promoted inclusive participation. These roles sharpened my leadership, collaboration, and implementation skills.
I have presented at WONCA Conferences (including the WONCA Europe 2024 Dublin opening ceremony), have been a finalist for the EYFDM Junior Researcher Award in 2024. I was nominated for EYFDM Fons Sips Award this year for my contributions to the EYFDM community and I won the WONCA Europe Scholarship at WONCA World Conference 2025 in Lisbon, Portugal. Therefore, this journey has been instrumental in shaping my current professional development with series of defining experiences in my life. And I am truly grateful for these opportunities.
Also, I am an active member in EGPRN, EUROPREV and EURACT networks for a couple years now. I presented my studies, attended meetings and I have also served as a host committee member once for the EGPRN Istanbul meeting. So, I am hopeful and confident that I will be able to make a valuable contribution to WONCA in the upcoming years. And I look forward to welcoming you in Istanbul for the WONCA Europe Conference in 2028.
Q4. Describe your plans for the award (your project, supervisors, where you will be based etc)
I am currently engaged in multiple international projects, all of which are proceeding in parallel. I have a major project idea involving the design and implementation of an expanded European-linked project related to my doctoral thesis on preventive health services. This project will also include the analysis of large data sets on the use of preventive health services and has the potential for numerous multinationals, multi-dimensional collaborations and publications. With the support of my mentors on this project, my public health doctoral thesis supervisor highly esteemed professor from Türkiye, Assoc. Prof. Meryem Merve Ören Çelik and my EGPRN mentorship programme mentor highly esteemed professor from Bulgaria, Prof. Dr. Radost Assenova, I am eagerly anticipating the significant impact we will have through various channels.
In addition, I am undertaking a further research project. The protocol for this project was developed jointly with my intercontinental mentor, was assigned to me through the WONCA Working Party on Research Mentorship programme. Together with my esteemed mentor, a family medicine professor from South Africa, Prof. Dr. Klaus von Pressentin and my many colleagues from various countries and regions, we have a research study regarding research capacities of family medicine trainees and specialists. We had already presented at the WONCA World Conference as a study protocol.
Alongside the major projects we have initiated with our esteemed professors, the valuable work we are carrying out with our young and brilliant colleagues at EYFDM continues to bear fruit. We are pleased to announce that some of the research we initiated with EYFDM Digital health and artificial intelligence SIG leaders has now been published, and that some of our projects are nearing completion. In the near future, we will be presenting a selection of our European and global digital health and artificial intelligence-related projects, webinars, and events to our younger colleagues. The fact that at least three of our applications are accepted at every WONCA conference, and that we cannot fit into the workshop rooms, actually demonstrates an increasing level of interest in these topics. I will continue to actively participate in events with new studies, articles, and papers that address rational approaches to artificial intelligence and highlight the need for conscious use while simplifying our lives, especially with broader perspectives.
Moreover, I have project plans regarding bridging prevention gaps in Primary Care, through identifying drivers of preventive service uptake and designing practical primary-care toolkits. I have already tested patient/parent education through teaching materials. I would like to create open toolkits for practices, and teaching modules for trainees for expanded impact.
So, I will use the opportunity to attend EGPRN/EUROPREV/EURACT meetings and WONCA Europe conferences actively to strengthen methodology, harmonise data, and accelerate dissemination. Throughout this journey, I will prioritize a sustainable research culture in primary care.
Q5. How do you think the scholarship will help your career?
This scholarship will provide stability to attend key meetings and continuity: travel/registration support to sustain international research, targeted training to deepen methods, and mentorship to accelerate publications and implementations.
The mentorship and visibility hopefully will amplify my contributions within WONCA Europe, strengthen leadership roles in WONCA and network organizations, and help me mature into a clinician-scientist who mentors others wisely, to advance both patient outcomes and the research culture of primary care.
Q6. Can you tell us about a family medicine doctor who inspires you? Why?
I have had the privilege of working with numerous mentors and supervisors, and I am certain that I will continue to benefit from their guidance throughout my professional career. I consider myself very fortunate to have access to national and international mentors whom I can consult for advice and guidance on my career path. I met these mentors at the many WONCA events I have attended since I began my career. I have been honoured to receive guidance from esteemed professionals such as Prof. Dr. Amanda Howe. After presenting my first presentation in English as a fresh trainee at the VdGM Forum, I met a former president of WONCA, who asked me a genuine question about my research. How marvellous! She has continued to broaden my horizons ever since and still does to this day.
And I would like to emphasize how fortunate I feel to have received Prof. Dr. Radost Assenova’s support and guidance since the day she was assigned to me as my mentor through the EGPRN mentorship programme. She consistently demonstrates autonomy in her support for my professional decisions, offering guidance and counsel that is both insightful and beneficial to my career development.
She has demonstrated consistent success in fulfilling a variety of roles, including those of mother, wife, and family doctor, in addition to holding a senior position at the medical faculty, serving as a member of the WONCA Europe Executive Board, and contributing as a member and representative of the prestigious research network, EGPRN. Not only that but also, she is playing an indispensable role in numerous international collaborations at EGPRN and WONCA. Her ability to juggle multiple roles (WONCA World Conference Scientific Co-chair with EGPRN Meeting Host organizing committee chair at the same time) while maintaining her warm, kind, and natural leadership style, her success as a respected researcher, and her unwavering commitment to her endeavours, all while never compromising her humanistic values, serve to solidify the profound admiration I have for her.
My mentor, Prof. Assenova’s inspirational approach combines rigorous, practice-relevant research and a commitment to genuine mentorship on an international scale. Her guidance turns evidence into simple recommendations for busy minds, while modelling humility, perseverance, and sustained support for young scholars—exactly the kind of impact I aspire to make.