IPCRG 2025 news summary
Each month in our newsletter we bring you the latest news and updates from across our network of member groups and partners. This ‘year in review’ article brings together they key updates we have shared with you over the past year across our key initiatives and areas of focus.
Read on for the full article, and click here to sign up to our newsletter to receive monthly updates from IPCRG.
IPCRG
At our annual general meeting in June, we welcomed two new country members, Peru and Uruguay, bringing our country membership to 41 and strengthening our primary care presence in South America. We have begun to run a monthly feature putting a spotlight on the activities of our members, so far focusing on the United Kingdom, Brazil and China. Do you have a story from your member group you wish to share? Please projectsupport [at] ipcrg [dot] org (subject: Country%20corner%20submission) (contact us) with further information so that we can feature your work.
The Impact Factor of our official open-access journal, npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine, was upgraded to a strong 4.7, placing it in the top quartile of both primary care AND respiratory medicine journals! José Luis Castro, the WHO Director-General Special Envoy for Chronic Respiratory Diseases, commented "For researchers, clinicians, and policymakers working to improve respiratory outcomes, this journal offers timely, peer-reviewed insights into what works—and how it can be implemented at scale.” This achievement reflects the hard work of our Editor-in-Chief Ioanna Tsiligianni, the editorial team, our Publishing Consultant Martin Delahunty and, of course, our authors.
Finally, we would like to thank the members of all of our committees for their contributions to the operation of our network and the development and delivery of our projects.
2026 will mark the 25th anniversary of IPCRG's founding and to mark this we will be refreshing our website, logo and images to introduce a consistent visual identity for all of our initiatives. The new website has been designed to highlight IPCRG's work and make it easier for our network to find the information they need as quickly as possible. The new logos will appear across IPCRG social media in December and the new website will launch in January.
Conferences
In April, we held our 8th Scientific Meeting in Brașov, Romania, which attracted praise from delegates for presenting “many opportunities for dialogue with early career people, pharmacists and healthcare professionals”. The event was hosted by our Romanian group RespiRO at the Transilvania University of Brașov. To view all abstracts presented at the meeting, visit our resources page, click 'Conferences' on the left-hand side and tick 'Brasov 2025'. Then, you can search by author name and keywords to find the abstracts you are looking for.
IPCRG colleagues and materials were present at conferences throughout 2025, including the European Respiratory Society meeting in Amsterdam where members of our network chaired and presented at primary and integrated respiratory care sessions, and also at WONCA 2025 in Porto, Portugal where colleagues delivered a 'Making Sense of COPD' workshop on providing personalised treatment and self-management support for people with COPD.
Registration and abstract submission is now open for the 13th IPCRG World Conference & 1st North African Interdisciplinary Respiratory Forum, which will take place in Tunis from 11-14 June 2026. The conference coincides with the 25th anniversary of IPCRG’s founding, and several founders will join us including Professors David Price and Thys van der Molen. Over recent months, we have been shining a spotlight on sessions in the scientific programme and shared messages from the conference co-chair, Habib Ghedira. We hope to see you in Tunis - remember to submit your abstract before 22 February!
Education
2025 saw the development of our existing education programmes and resources as well as the launch of a brand new initiative, Breaths.
Breaths is an e-learning initiative designed to enhance primary care providers' capability, confidence, and motivation in delivering high-quality respiratory care. Each Breath is around five minutes long, highly practical, and designed specifically for busy primary care professionals. Since launching earlier this year we have now published 22 Breaths addressing asthma, rhinitis, COPD and remote respiratory consultations, with more planned for next year. Subscribe to the Breaths mailing list and WhatsApp announcements channel for updates!
Our Desktop Helpers are user-friendly, evidence-based practical guides for clinicians working in primary care. This year, we launched three new Desktop Helpers: on peak expiratory flow, rhinitis diagnosis and rhinitis treatment. These resources are complemented by case studies and translations.
Our capacity-building Teach the Teacher programme spread in 2025, with workshops taking place in:
- Vietnam (Asthma Right Care, Tier 2)
- Dominican Republic (Asthma Right Care, Tier 3)
- China (COPD Right Care, Tier 1 - our first COPD Teach the Teacher)
We also delivered an online Teach the Teacher programme for FRESHAIR4Life, equipping national teams from Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Greece, Romania and Pakistan to implement tailored interventions on smoking cessation among adolescents.
Finally, our leading initiative Spirometry Simplified, which seeks to empower primary care clinicians worldwide by promoting the widespread and equitable adoption of spirometry, ran two new editions in 2025 - one in Brașov, Romania at our Scientific Meeting with delegates from Romania, North Macedonia, Portugal and India, and another in Singapore, which enjoyed record participation with 30 participants. The fourth edition is already in preparation for our upcoming conference in Tunis; this will be the first bilingual edition, in English and French, and will bring the programme to a cumulative total of 100 certified learners.
Research
IPCRG continued to contribute to the primary care and respiratory research landscape by partnering in research projects and collaborations, disseminating research evidence for public benefit, and developing research skills across our network.
The national teams participating in FRESHAIR4Life began implementation after Tier 1 Teach the Teacher sessions equipped them with the skills to pursue interventions around smoking cessation and air pollution among adolescents.
We launched the Global Primary Care Respiratory Collaborative to bring together generators, users and funders of research to advance primary respiratory healthcare in low- and middle-income countries, in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the NIHR-funded RESPIRE programme. By identifying critical gaps and actionable opportunities, it will bridge research and practice – ensuring evidence reaches primary care and the communities most affected by respiratory disease. The Collaborative has lots of plans for 2026, including the launch of an open-access evidence repository on implementing chronic respiratory interventions in primary care settings.
IPCRG leads the Stakeholder Engagement programme for RESPIRE, a global health respiratory research programme in Asia, which was selected by the funded, UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) as an award winner in its inaugural Impact Prize. RESPIRE competed against 130 applicants from the full NIHR portfolio, not just global health projects, so this is an important achievement. RESPIRE held its annual scientific meeting in Sabah, Malaysia in July, where colleagues exhibited research projects that we hope will be submitted to our upcoming conference in Tunis (abstracts are open until 22 February).
The Global Health Respiratory Network (GHRN), which brings together UK-funded global respiratory research partnerships, runs a journal club which in 2025 concluded a series of free academic writing workshops on grant writing, writing for publication, writing critically and writing up implementation science. The full list of over 200 publications by GHRN members can be accessed here.
At our Scientific Meeting in Brașov, we held a successful research school on implementation science studies in primary care which was attended by 19 people from a range of countries. The school aimed to build capacity in primary care respiratory research by providing interactive, hands-on training.
Asthma Right Care
Asthma Right Care continued to innovate and expand in 2025, with quarterly delivery team meetings demonstrating the variety of activities undertaken across 35 countries by our national groups to start new conversations about what good quality asthma care looks like and how primary care can provide it. Our resourceful teams have experimented with gamification to provoke and sustain behaviour change - an angle we intend to focus on at our upcoming conference in Tunis.
As well as sitting on the WHO guideline groups for asthma, our Asthma Right Care leaders have also joined GINA and GAAPP stakeholders to discuss the policy changes and education needs that can help to accelerate adoption of GINA track 1 asthma management and how our tools can engage and spark system and culture change.
To further spread Asthma Right Care, colleagues have delivered an expert-led webinar on the key challenges in managing patients with difficult-to-manage asthma and obesity through a case-study approach, as well as an interactive workshop on the asthma diagnosis jigsaw puzzle in Malaysia.
So much has happened and we will add further detail in the New Year!
COPD Right Care
We have now developed a compelling pack of resources for COPD Right Care which we are excited to roll out in new countries. We have just run our first COPD Right Care Teach the Teacher programme in China, reaching 57 delegates from 19 provinces - click here for more information.
The COPD Wheel and guidance notes were updated following user feedback and the latest GOLD guidelines, and now include additional guidance on diagnosis, cardiopulmonary risk and triggers. The wheel is now complemented by a demo video showing how it can be used with patients in a consultation setting.
We published issue 3 of our COPD Magazine, which focuses on what a normal life with COPD can look like by offering tips on day-to-day management and interactions with health services including noticing changes in your health, making the most of a consultation, identifying flare-ups and recovering afterwards. This guidance is complemented by curated videos, infographics, action plans and video diaries of people with COPD sharing their experiences and advice.
Our network is busy spreading COPD Right Care, with an expanded delivery team testing our resources in new countries and IPCRG colleagues having run a ‘Making Sense of COPD’ workshop at WONCA 2025. Furthermore, a number of IPCRG colleagues now sit on new groups set up by the World Health Organization to develop guidelines for the diagnosis and management of COPD, reflecting the experience and knowledge involved in COPD Right Care.
Rhinitis Right Care
This year, we launched our third Change Programme: Rhinitis Right Care. Rhinitis including allergic rhinitis is a very common problem in primary care and we will describe what good quality care looks like, as we have done for asthma and COPD, and offer support to improve primary care competence and confidence to diagnose and manage these conditions. So far, we have produced two Desktop Helpers - one on improving rhinitis management in primary care and another on improving diagnosis (endorsed by the World Allergy Organization!) - as well as the first of a series of Breaths dedicated to rhinitis. 2025 was a strong starting year for Rhinitis Right Care and we look forward to expanding the programme in 2026.
Go to www.ipcrg.org to find out more about IPCRG, a charity working locally in primary care and collaborating globally to improve respiratory health so we can achieve our vision of a global population breathing and feeling well through universal access to right care.
Amanda Barnard
President IPCRG
Siân Williams
CEO IPCRG