TY - JOUR T1 - Leadership development and primary care JF - BMJ Leader JO - BMJ Leader BMJ Leader SP - 59 LP - 61 DO - 10.1136/leader-2019-000145 VL - 3 IS - 2 AU - Tim Swanwick AU - Robert Varnam Y1 - 2019/06/01 UR - http://bmjleader.bmj.com/content/3/2/59.abstract N2 - Health services across the developed world are evolving rapidly, and over the coming years some of the most wide-ranging changes are expected to occur in primary care. Primary care includes the largest number of providers, and in the UK accounts for the largest proportion of patient contacts with the National Health Service (NHS), around 300 million per year in general practice alone.1 To meet the needs of a changing population, adopt vital innovations, redesign for greater sustainability, and support increasing personalised and integrated care, primary care teams will need to evolve the way they work. In addition, there is growing evidence that community-building—working with and growing local community ‘assets’—in partnership with local authorities and the voluntary sector is essential to achieving better population health outcomes, improved self-management of long-term conditions and in reducing demand.2 Achieving these transformational changes represents a leadership challenge of unprecedented scale and complexity and requires that primary care professionals are inspired, equipped and supported in leadership roles.The need for an improved leadership development offer for primary care has been recognised in successive national policy documents, including in England the General Practice Forward View,3 Developing People - Improving Care 4 and a new Long Term Plan for the NHS.5 But this is a complex landscape and there are multiple agencies and stakeholders involved. No one organisation holds the complete picture, and so an engaged and collaborative effort, aligned to an agreed strategic approach, is essential for progress to be made.The unique configuration and challenges of primary care point to the need for some specific approaches to leadership development, distinct from many other sectors of the health service. (For the remainder of this paper we refer throughout to primary care in England and view primary care broadly as a citizen’s first … ER -