Welcome Letter by Prof. Ee Ming Khoo

IPCRG President


Welcome to IPCRG Athens 2024

On behalf of the International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG) working with our Greek colleagues, we invite you to join with us at the 12th World Conference, taking place in Athens, Greece, from 9-11 May 2024.

The theme of the conference is Creating Change. Therefore, as well as a unique opportunity for researchers, the meeting has a strong educational focus, including valuable updates on key primary care issues, essential skills such as motivational communication and a new focus on leadership capacity building. The international Scientific Programme Committee chaired by Prof Ioanna Tsiligianni, University of Heraklion, has developed a varied programme enabling you to select from skills-based workshops, plenary sessions, oral abstract sessions and conversation cafés.

It is ten years since we have been in Athens, and a lot has happened since then! As well as our once every two year opportunity to meet with global primary care colleagues, this is also an opportunity to meet new colleagues from Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East.

Following the success of our post-pandemic meeting in Malaga in 2022, we are working with an experienced team of primary care clinicians to produce a programme that meets our peers’ learning needs and curiosity.

Our aim is to attract over 800 family and integrated care physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and allied healthcare professionals to Athens, providing plentiful opportunities for networking. Our speakers will address topics and issues relevant to countries of all income levels, including asthma, allergy, COPD, respiratory infections and symptoms such as breathlessness and cough in an exciting mix of plenaries, debates, interactive sessions, and workshops.

We received excellent feedback from the individuals and organisations that attended our recent World Conferences. In 2022 we attracted 750 delegates; in 2021 over 800 virtual participants and in 2018, over 1000 attended in-person, from over 30 countries worldwide. The 12th IPCRG World Conference is the ideal place for you to meet primary care role models, academics, teachers, and early adopters of innovation and to support the continued development of primary care to deliver good respiratory outcomes.

The Scientific Programme will build on successful features from 2022 such as sessions on greening respiratory care and building sustainable primary care practices given huge pressures on time at the moment. Every session will have a case study or “so what does this mean for me” discussion to consolidate learning and suggest ways to change practice.

In addition we will incorporate learning from our Munich Scientific Meeting which attracted nearly 60 good quality primary care respiratory abstracts, to ensure there is a strong academic programme.
We look forward to seeing you at the 12th IPCRG World Conference.

With my best wishes

Ee Ming Khoo, IPCRG President