The EYFDM Being Young Staying Young Award is a prestigious award that recognises an individual who over a prolonged period of time had made a valuable and key contribution to EYFDM (previously VdGM).
The recipient should be a senior doctor who has contributed and influenced the development of EYFDM, and also epitomizes, espouses and evokes in others the youthful mindset which characterises and underpins the heart, soul and ethos of EYFDM.
BYSY Award 2024
Dr Steve Mowle (UK) was the successful recipient and he joined us at the EYFDM Forum in Vienna to receive the award and address our members.
Steve has supported EYFDM both within the UK and now more widely within WONCA over many years. He helped to set-up the UK branch of EYFDM, the Junior International Committee. As a leader within the UK’s WONCA member organisation, he also helped make sure that the 7th EYFDM Forum in 2022 could go ahead, despite the still lingering Covid-19 pandemic. He joined us again in Vienna and gave an inspiring speech about how to make the most of our careers as family doctors.
Former Winners
2022 BYSY Award Raquel Gomez Bravo
Raquel is an incredible example of creativity, leadership and humility, she is a true young spirit who has decided to be vascodagamian forever regardless of position, country of residence, family situation or age.
The teaching of true democracy, transparency, and pristine honesty is the moral inheritance that Raquel has left me and all my colleagues and fellow vascodagamians who have had the privilege and pleasure of working with her, where today she continues joining force and the wisdom of the senior doctors with the talent, freshness and fire of the young family doctors. As a “VascodaGamian”, Raquel has always taken an active role: she represented Spain and SemFYC, she was a member of the EYFDM/VdGM Executive, she also coordinated the EYFDM/VdGM Group BEYOND EUROPE and was the EYFDM/VdGM Liaison for the WONCA Working Party on Women and Family Medicine (WWPWFM), just to name a few.
Raquel was the Chair of the Host Organising Committee of the 1st VdGM (now EYFDM) Forum in Barcelona 2014, starting a new model of event that is very dear to all EYFDM family. Her dedication to the Vasco da Gama Movement has remained unbreakable beyond the time defined as “young doctor”. She stays young and more remarkable, she stays alongside with the younger doctors. She keeps a close collaboration and strong support to EYFDM Family Violence SIG, utilising past experience and current work with WONCA FV SIG. She always accepts all challenges we suggest to her, being an active member in current EYFDM/VDGM projects (like VdGM Bridge Project), and mentoring and supporting various VdGM members, with active and positive encouragement. She has been a speaker in VdGM events, like the 6th VdGM Forum in Torino.”
Marta Kurdzielewicz | Awards&Fundraising Officer
2017 Laureate of the BYSY Award: Luisa Pettigrew
Luisa has been a passionate contributor to global health and international collaboration in healthcare since her medical school days at Edinburgh University, organising Erasmus exchanges and becoming involved with the International Federation of Medical Students.
As a junior doctor this passion has flourished, as Luisa helped to establish the Junior International Committee of the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK and the hugely successful Hippokrates Exchanges program, that underpins a huge part of VdGM’s activity to this day. She has gone on to travel the world, undertaking an international health diploma in Spain, a masters dissertation in Health Policy and Planning in Sri Lanka and most recently in her role as WONCA Member at Large WHO Liaison. She has also written chapters in a number of books for family medicine trainees, as well as contributed the 2013 revision of WONCA’s Guidebook on the Contribution of Family Medicine to Improving Health Systems. Although she is now no longer a “young doctor” by techinical definition, we feel that Luisa will always be “young”; representing the spirit of the Vasco da Gama Movement and continuing to support and motivate colleagues across Europe and beyond. Thank you Luisa, for being a inspirational tour de force and a role model to young GPs everywhere. Read more about Luisa on the WONCA website.
2015 Laureate of the BYSY Award: Per Kallestrup
Per Kallestrup has been an inspirational figure to many within EYFDM. Being responsible for the establishment of the EYFDM (previously VDGM) Hippokrates Exchange Programme he has remained in close contact with its development and continues to act in a senior supervisory capacity.
He plays an active role within the EYFDM (formerly VdGM) community and frequently attends meetings at which he motivates, enthuses and galvanizes young GPs and Family Doctors – as he describes, the “Troubadours of general practice”. Per is not only a father figure but also lives through the values which are important to EYFDM; collaboration, empowerment, valuing each individual, striving to be the best we can and as the award title expresses so simply yet powerfully, at all times having an attitude which is “Being Young” and “Staying Young”. For the members of EYFDM it was therefore a great honour that Per Kallestrup so graciously agreed to be the inaugural recipient of the EYFDM/VDGM “Being Young Staying Young” award. Per Kallestrup was WONCA News’ featured doctor for April 2015.