Dr Gabriel Ivbijaro Awarded MBE
Chair of the Wonca Working Party on Mental Health, Dr Gabby Ivbijaro, has been awarded a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE), by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll. The news came out via the United Kingdom New Years Honours’ List 2012 with the citation stating: “Dr Gabriel Obukohwa Ivbijaro, General Practitioner and Clinical Director, Walthamstow, London, for services to the NHS”. Wonca leaders extend their congratulations to Gabby for this honour.
A reprint follows of profile of Dr Gabby Ivbijaro from Wonca News, April 2011.Dr Ivbijaro MBBS FRCGP FWACPsych MMedSci DFFP MA graduated from the University of Benin in Nigeria in 1982 and became a fellow of the West African College of Psychiatry in 1990, before coming to England for further training. He completed the Membership examination of the Royal College of General Practitioners UK in 1998, a Masters Degree in Psychiatry and Neurology from the University of Leeds in 1999, and was appointed a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 2004. He completed a Masters Degree in Leadership from the University of Middlesex in 2005 and has been a Visiting Fellow at the London South Bank University since 2002.
Dr Ivbijaro is current chair of the Wonca Working Party on Mental Health and editor-in-chief of Mental Health in Family Medicine. He has made a significant contribution to the development of mental health in primary care internationally, and is the co-editor of the 2008 joint Wonca / WHO publication Integrating mental health into primary care: a global perspective.
His area of interest is the empowerment of primary care worldwide to embrace the principles behind the Alma Ata declaration.
He is a member of NHS Waltham Forest (NHSWF) Board, in East London, which commissions and procures full medical services for a population of over 250000, in the London borough of Waltham Forest. The Board holds the budget for general practice, secondary and tertiary services for the whole population of this area. He is an appointed governor of the North East
London NHS Foundation Trust which provides psychiatric services to five North East London Boroughs. In his role as clinical governance lead, he has driven up standards in his local area through a number of important projects including the development of a practice professional development plan for all GP practices in his Primary Care Trust.
Dr Ivbijaro is a specialist on the general practice Quality Outcome Framework (QOF) and has piloted the use of this tool within a secondary care setting. He worked with other experts in developing guidelines for Primary Care and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programmes in the Republic of Macedonia. He is a member of the Mental Health Task Force of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Intercollegiate Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, tasked with developing a guideline on the management of gender dysphoria.
He continues to champion the role of primary care as a tool for health delivery and has a teaching practice in an inner city area of East London which has an interest in mainstreaming the marginalised and participates as a speaker in many national and international conferences.