King’s Health Partners celebrates 15 years of pioneering healthcare

King’s Health Partners is celebrating 15 years of improving patient care through research and innovation in south east London and beyond.  

Formed in 2009 as one of eight Academic Health Sciences Centres (AHSC) across the UK, King’s Health Partners (KHP) works to improve health and care services for patients and communities by bringing together research, education and clinical practice. 

Dr Rachna Chowla, Joint Director of Clinical Strategy at KHP and a GP in south east London, said:

Our sustained focus over the last fifteen years has been about ‘pioneering better health for all’ – which means improving outcomes for our patients and improving the health of our population. 

As a GP I have a particular interest in how the partnership can support primary care in south east London. I love working in a collaborative environment that allows me to connect people and ideas – health is a team sport and when we work in partnership, including of course with our patients and communities, we come up with better solutions.

The partnership is formed of three NHS Trusts - Guy's and St Thomas', King's College Hospital, and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts, and world-leading university King’s College London.  

KHP serves a population of more than 1.1 million people in south east London, which is among the most ethnically, socially and economically diverse in the world. It provides the opportunity to develop treatment and therapies to meet the needs of local and global populations, and work with industry partners.  

Dr Catherine French, Director of Strategy at KHP, said:

Our ambition to improve patient care and tackle health inequalities remains at the forefront of everything we do. KHP’s fifteenth birthday gives us the opportunity to celebrate longer term initiatives, such as the Vital 5 and IMPARTS, which have delivered improvements and contributed to our understanding of how we deliver lasting change.  We also now look forward to the next phase of partnership, as we work with the communities we serve to develop three priorities – personalised health, digital health and data sciences, and population health, taking a mind and body approach. 

From the beginning KHP has been committed to joining up mental and physical healthcare, including addressing the inequalities in health outcomes experienced by people with mental illness.  

KHP has worked to achieve this through projects like IMPARTS and the Vital 5 initiative. The Vital 5 initiative advocates for communities and organisations to make improvements in five major health factors: blood pressure; mental health; obesity; smoking; and alcohol.  

The recently launched KHP Centre for Translational Medicine brings together our partner organisations and generous funding from the Guy's and St Thomas' Charity to work to improve the health of people locally, nationally, and globally. The first Fellowships have been awarded, with project areas including hypertension, cancer, fetal imaging, women and children’s health, and inflammatory diseases. 

Prof Mona Bafadhel, co-leader of the KHP Respiratory and Allergy Clinical Academic Group, said:

KHP brings together communities from across the sciences and clinical laboratories, with the aim of improving outcomes in the patient clinics. KHP’s vision for the past 15 years - uniting groups for a common aim – really should be celebrated. 

Over the next few weeks KHP will be celebrating staff across the partnership across our channels, through a series of interviews and articles. 

The KHP Annual Conference 2024 will be held on Thursday 26 September. Register your interest here. 

To learn more about IMPARTS, click here.