Being Young Staying Young Award (BYSY)

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

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.

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.