UCL takes top two places in national GP research competition

Gary Parkes, a GP who gained his PhD from UCL in March this year, has pipped his PhD supervisor Professor Trish Greenhalgh (UCL Primary Care & Population Sciences) into second place in the Royal College of General Practitioners? (RCGP) Research Paper of the Year Award 2009. Gary Parkes, who is now a general practitioner in Hertfordshire, won the national for his paper describing a randomised controlled trial of lung age estimation among people aiming to give up smoking. Smoking is known to cause lung damage, and lung function decreases with age, so a smoker's lungs are, on average, 'older' than their chronological age. Gary showed that smokers who were given an estimate of their lung function in terms of lung age were twice as likely to quit as those who were given their lung function as raw figures, and differences were sustained at one-year follow-up. Estimating someone's lung age is a simple, low-cost procedure, and Parkes has already been invited to advise national policymaking groups. Parkes? supervisor, Professor Trisha Greenhalgh, and statistician Mark Griffin, joined him on the winner's podium from UCL. Parkes said: 'It is a great privilege to win this award and a tribute to the hard work of the team involved in the Step2quit research study.