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Dr Michael Dixon has stepped down as NHS Alliance chair, but he has not left the limelight.
The Devon GP and College of Medicine chair has spent the year as NHS England’s clinical champion for social prescribing, He has overseen a ten-fold rise in the membership of his National Social Prescribing Network and had social prescribing included as one of the GP Forward View’s 10 ‘high-impact actions’.
He has also talked to commissioners about GP practices receiving £1 per patient to employ a social prescribing ‘adviser’.
He is also chair of the College of Medicine, leading work on beating food poverty. The idea is to work with farmers, food producers, retailers, food outlets and food academics to ‘overcome current incentives in our system that provide poor food for those that need good food the most’, says Dr Dixon.
The College has also introduced, in the last year, two-day courses for GPs who ‘are finding their current work unsatisfying’.
But when asked what his favourite moment of the 12 months was, Dr Dixon says: ‘The birth of my first two grandchildren.’
Why influential
Social prescribing tsar
What others say
‘Inspirational leader’
Random fact
Received an award from Archbishop Desmond Tutu
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