Officers of the European Society for Person Centered Healthcare

President and Chairman of Council
Professor Sir Jonathan Elliott Asbridge DSc (hc) DHSc (hc) DSc (hc)

 

Professor Sir Jonathan Elliott Asbridge DSc (hc) DHSc (hc) DSc (hc) has a long and distinguished record of achievement within British healthcare system organisation, accreditation, re-configuration, executive management, leadership and regulation. Gaining appointment to the positions of Chief Nurse of the Oxford University and Cambridge University Teaching Hospitals early in his career, he moved to St. Bartholomew’s and The Royal London Foundation NHS Trust as Chief Nurse and Executive Director of Quality, later to lead the Trust, one of the biggest and most complex and highly funded in the UK, as Chief Executive.

Sir Jonathan was the Inaugural President of the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council with responsibility for the fitness for practice and regulation of the UK’s then 700,000 nurses and midwives. He is a previous Deputy Chairman of the UK Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence and has acted as a Government ‘Tsar’ for Patient Experience in Emergency Care, and also for Patient and Public Involvement in Healthcare. Sir Jonathan has been involved in the development of several major NHS policies and has conducted several formal Inquiries both in the UK and overseas. He was appointed Foundation Professor of Nursing at the University of Buckingham UK in 2010, and was a Founding Board Member of the European Federation of Nursing Regulators and a Member of the International Council of Nurses Global Observatory on Licensure and Registration.

Sir Jonathan was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa for services to healthcare by the City of London University in 2004, and was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for services to Healthcare on the occasion of The Sovereign’s 80th Birthday in 2006. Sir Jonathan received a second honorary doctorate for services to health and person-centered care from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, in 2016. He was awarded a third honorary doctorate in recognition of his global leadership in person-centered care from the University of West London in 2019, at which institution he remains Honorary Visiting Professor in Person Centered Care.

Sir Jonathan is currently Chief Clinical Officer of Healthcare at Home UK. He is married with four children and is professionally based in Oxford, England. Sir Jonathan can be contacted at: president@pchealthcare.org.uk


Senior Vice President and Secretary General
Professor Andrew Miles BMedSci MSc MPhil PhD DSc (hc)

Professor Andrew Miles BMedSci MSc MPhil PhD DSc (hc) is Senior Vice President and Secretary General of the European Society for Person Centered Healthcare (ESPCH) and Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal for Person Centered Healthcare (EJPCH), the official journal of the ESPCH. He is the Founding Editor-in-Chief (1994 – 2019) of the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice (JECP). 

Professor Miles trained at the University of Wales and its medical school in Cardiff, Wales, and was awarded his first Chair in London at the age of 30. He has held senior professorial appointments at the major London medical schools, including Guy’s, King’s College and St. Thomas’ Hospitals’ Medical School in London, and at St. Bartholomew’s and The Royal London Hospitals´ School of Medicine (Bart’s) in London, and was a Senior Fellow at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Education and Training, Imperial College London. Professor Miles has also been Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Social Medicine and Deputy Vice Chancellor (Deputy Rector/DVC) of the University of Buckingham, which operates one of the UK’s few private medical schools, the foundational development of which he contributed to prominently in his capacity as DVC during the latter stages of his tenure. 

Professor Miles has been a Visiting Professor in Person Centered Care at the University of Milan (UNIMI), the second biggest university in Italy, and a Visiting Professor in Person Centered Care within the medical school of Francisco de Vitoria University, a private Catholic university in Madrid, Spain. Professor Miles was Foundation Professor of Person Centred Health and Social Care and Co-Director of the European Centre for Person Centred Health and Social Care at the University of West London from April 2018 to May 2021. Professor Miles is currently an Honorary Visiting Professor within the Joint Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education at the St. George’s University Teaching Hospital Campus in London. He is an Honorary Visiting Professor in Person Centered Care at Fernando Pessoa University in Porto, Portugal, an Honorary Visiting Professor of Person Centered Care within the Faculty of Medicine of the Medical University of Plovdiv in Bulgaria, and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Theology of the National University of Bulgaria at Sofia. 

Professor Miles holds five degrees, including four higher degrees: two Master’s degrees (prostate diagnostic pathology, clinical audit/evaluation) and two Doctorates (pineal gland neuroendocrinology, person-centered medicine), the latter doctorate being awarded honoris causa for his contribution to the advancement of person-centered healthcare internationally. Professor Miles has published extensively in the peer reviewed medical and biomedical press (some 100 peer-reviewed papers), co-editing some 50 medical textbooks in association with an extensive number of medical Royal Colleges and medical and clinical societies in the UK and Europe, and has organised and presided over some 130 clinical conferences and masterclasses in London and Europe as part of a major and long term contribution to British and European postgraduate medical education.

Professor Miles is a Distinguished Academician of the National Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bulgaria, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine UK, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health UK, a Fellow of the Catholic Medical Association of the USA, a Fellow of the Society of Catholic Scientists, a Fellow of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and a former Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, USA.

Professor Miles has lectured widely in person-centered healthcare across Europe, and is accredited with having changed the direction of the global EBM debate away from scientistic reductionism based on population-derived aggregate biostatistical data and rigid foundationalism, towards the embrace of the complex and the personal within international medicine and healthcare policymaking. Professor Miles has a profound interest in the modern management of the long term, multi-morbid and socially complex illnesses, and the methods through which medicine´s traditional and indispensable humanism can be effectively re-integrated with rapidly continuing scientific and technological advance. Professor Andrew Miles can be contacted at: andrew.miles@pchealthcare.org.uk


Vice President (Northern Europe)
Professor Linn Okkenhaug Getz MD PhD

Professor Linn Getz is a Professor in Behavioural Sciences in Medicine (corresponding to Bio-Psycho-Social medicine) and Senior researcher at the General Practice Research Unit, Department of Public Health and General Practice, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. Linn is a Norwegian Medical Doctor with clinical experience from general practice, psychiatry and occupational medicine in Norway and Iceland. Her PhD, titled ¨Sustainable and Responsible Preventive Medicine¨ (2006), deals with ethical dilemmas emerging from clinical implementation of advancing medical technology. Linn has taken an active part in the development of the ideological bases for general practice (family medicine) in the Nordic region. In this context she has devoted considerable time and thought to the rapidly increasing body of evidence which links human existential experience to biological function and disease development. She is currently involved in projects focusing on multi morbidity, the patient as a person, as well as potentials and pitfalls related to the rapidly increasing interest in systems biology as an emerging scientific basis for so-called “personalized” (-omics) medicine.

Vice President (Southern Europe)
Dr. Marco Bregni MD

Dr. Marco Bregni is a Specialist in Haematology and Oncology at the Ospedale di Circolo, Busto Arsizio, Italy and Professor of Oncology at University Vita-Salute, Milan. He has worked in stem cell transplantation in leading Italian institutions and has contributed major advances to the field of stem cell transplantation in solid tumours. He is a past Chairman of the Solid Tumour Working Party of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) and was elected President of the Annual Meeting of the EBMT held in 2014 in Milan, Italy. He is a Past President of the Italian Society for Medicine and the Person. His interests are mainly in reduced-intensity allografting in solid tumours as adoptive immunotherapy, high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem-cell transplant in solid tumours, gene transfer and gene therapy studies in haematopoietic cells and applications of cellular and molecular therapies in medical oncology.

Vice President (Western Europe)
Dr. Thomas Fröhlich MD PhD

Dr. Thomas Fröhlich is a Biologist, Paediatrician, Allergologist and Psychotherapist. He is engaged in teaching (Verbundweiterbildung, Department of General Practice and Health Services Research, University of Heidelberg, Germany) and on behalf of MEDI Deutschland, an interdisciplinary medical doctors association. He is an affiliated member of the Committee for Medical Qualification for General Practitioners and Family Doctors in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He works closely with the German Association of General Practitioners and is a member of the National Paediatrics Committee of this association and of the Working Group for Psychosomatic Medicine in the German College of General Practitioners and Family Physicians (DEGAM). As a biologist he is a member of the European Neuroscience Association / Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, as a Paediatrician of the German Association of Paediatricians, as a Psychotherapist of the German Union of Analytical Children´s Psychotherapists and of the Society for Depth Psychology, Germany. He is a Specialist in Psychosomatic Medicine and with reference to philosophical Anthropology a member of the Philosophers Association Helmuth Plessner Gesellschaft, Germany. He is an Allergologist in the European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) and a member of the German Society of Paediatric Pulmonology. He installed an interdisciplinary research group engaged in formal description of biopsychosocial interactions in 1997, publishing step by step a corresponding formalised interaction model, given in both mathematical and (mainly Aristotelian) philosophical terms. 

Vice President (Eastern Europe)
Professor Drozdstoj St. Stoyanov MD PhD

Professor Drozdstoj (Drossi) St. Stoyanov was appointed as Full Professor of Psychiatry, Medical Psychology and Person Centered Medicine within the Faculty of Medicine of the Medical University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria at the age of 33 years. He received his MD and PhD from the Medical University of Sofia in 2002 and 2005, respectively, and was Board Certified in 2007. Prior to his appointment to the full professorship, Professor Stoyanov was a tenured Associate Professor in the Medical University of Plovdiv in 2008 and Vice Dean for International Affairs of its Faculty of Public Health from 2009 to 2011. He is currently Special Advisor for Strategic Partnerships to the Vice Rector for International Affairs and is Co-Director of the University Center for Philosophy and Mental Health. Professor Stoyanov practises clinically as a psychiatrist at the ‘St. Ivan Rilski’ State Psychiatric Hospital. Professor Stoyanov is also Vice Chairman of the Philosophy Special Interest Group of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists and a Member of its Executive Committee. He is Chairman of the Conceptual Group within the Global Network for Diagnosis and Classification launched by the World Psychiatric Association (2008). He was elected Visiting Fellow to the Center for Philosophy of Science of the University of Pittsburgh, USA, in 2009. He has published more than 150 scholarly papers, including 5 monographs and 3 textbooks. Since 2007, Professor Stoyanov has acted as a member of the Editorial Board, Secretary- Co-ordinator and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the International Annual for the History and Philosophy of Medicine. He is also an Editorial Board member of Frontiers in Psychiatry, Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neurosciences, Folia Medica, the European Journal for Person Centered Healthcare, among others.

Vice President for International Affairs
<CURRENTLY VACANT, PENDING RECRUITMENT AND APPOINTMENT FOR 2022>