12th IPCRG World Conference
Welcome to IPCRG Athens 2024
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. The membership of our Scientific Programme Committee, chaired by Assoc Prof Ioanna Tsiligianni, reflects this.
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 speakers will address topics and issues relevant to countries of all income levels in an exciting mix of plenaries, debates, interactive sessions and workshops.
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 meeting has a strong educational focus, aligning with our objective to build research capacity in primary care. The international Scientific Programme Committee chaired by Prof Ioanna Tsiligianni, University of Heraklion, is developing a series of sessions that meet the core interests and address current issues in respiratory primary care. The theme of the conference is Creating Change.
Location: The conference will take place at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre in the heart of Athens.
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Abstract deadline: 8th January
The IPCRG abstract deadline is 8 January 2024.
Authors who submit by this date will be notified by 5 February 2024.
Late-breaking abstracts
For the first time, we are introducing late-breaking abstracts to allow those whose data is not available before the initial deadline to be able to submit an abstract for the World Conference. This deadline is 7 March. However, acceptance is not guaranteed as the numbers of late breaking abstracts that can be accepted into the programme slots will be very limited.
Make your travel arrangements early to avoid the rush at the end of Orthodox Easter!
The abstract deadline of 8 January 2024 and notification date of 5 February 2024 should allow people to make their travel arrangements, apply for visas and obtain permission or funding from their organisation. Our meeting is at the end of Orthodox Easter, so return flights will be popular. Therefore, we very much encourage you to book your travel well in advance to secure both your preferred connections and an affordable cost for your travel and accommodation. This is important whether you are close or far away from Athens!
Abstracts
Registration and abstract submission will open on 1 November 2023. The abstract committee chaired by Izolde Bouloukaki welcomes abstracts in 3 categories:
1. Clinical research
Your abstract may be a summary of the findings of exploratory, effectiveness or implementation research that addresses a clinical question and uses a research method. You must have data and the work must be relevant to a primary care respiratory audience. Bear in mind that the IPCRG campaigns for patient care to be evidence-based, using evidence from real life, that includes populations representative of primary care populations.
The questions from our Research Prioritisation exercise provide a useful guide to what would be of most interest to our audience. Please follow the IMRaD format, including an Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion (meta-analyses may require a different format).
2. Service development and improvement
Service development & evaluation abstracts are encouraged and should describe an intervention to create, improve or evaluate a service or interventions that benefit respiratory health, including educational interventions and quality improvement programmes. This can include surveys and should include the aim, outline of context, a brief description of the change and why you thought it would work, your strategy for change, impact and lessons learned.
3. Research ideas
The research ideas category welcomes abstracts that are either a proposal for research that has been carefully planned but is yet to be conducted or protocols for approved research, which may already be underway. The abstract should include the research question, background, methodology and questions to discuss.
The IPCRG actively encourages primary care practitioners to submit an abstract, being aware that there are few academic centres of primary respiratory care and that there is no global database of primary care respiratory research in progress. We would be delighted to receive abstracts describing a research question and a methodology that can then benefit from peer discussion and challenge to increase research capability in primary care respiratory research.
The questions from our Research Prioritisation exercise are a good starting point for your research ideas, and ideas can include air quality, tobacco use and dependence, physical activity, breathlessness, cough, asthma, COPD, multi-morbidity including chronic respiratory disease, respiratory infections including TB, RSV, COVID-19 and post-COVID syndrome.
Draft programme
This meeting has a full programme of educational, discussion and scientific sessions. These include the major topics of planetary and respiratory health, asthma and COPD, and a wide range of sessions are planned covering breathlessness, mental health, cough, motivational communication, building an interdisciplinary team, and leadership.