Our esteemed colleague Professor Paul Wallace sadly passed away some days ago. We offer our condolences to his wife and family.
Paul was loved and respected by many, well known as a general practitioner, as well as academic researcher and teacher. Paul qualified as a physician in 1976, and as a GP in 1981, parallelly qualifying in epidemiology. He became Professor of Primary Care at University College London in 1993. All the time of his academic career, for 30 years, he also took care of patients as a general practitioner, until his retirement in 2012.
As director of the International Training Course for General Practitioners from 1991-1997, he formed many of the later leaders of family medicine in Europe.
To many, including several members of the current WONCA EU executive board, Paul was a dedicated mentor, always approachable and ready to share his reflections and experience. As president of EGPRN and many years as an active past president, Paul invested his time and energy into general practice research capacity building on an international scale and inspired young GP researchers. Later, he also became a leader in building up family medicine in Palestine, involved in the Arab American University.
Paul was a forward-looking pioneer and leader of many developments in general practice and general practice research, for example practice based research networks and digital care interventions, as well as detecting and treating addiction issues in primary care settings.
He will be missed and remembered.