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Improving Health, Transforming Lives

We are one of the world’s most important centres for academic primary care, leading world-class research and education to rethink the way healthcare is delivered in general practice and across other community settings.

Vision & Mission

  • Our vision is for stronger, fairer and more sustainable primary health care – locally, nationally and globally.
  • Our mission is to deliver research and innovation that improve primary health care delivery, translated into world-class education and training. Our aim is to help everyone live healthier lives.

Read our Strategy Executive Summary

What drives us: our strategic priorities

Responding to and preventing NHS / health system pressures

We will help the system shift to prevention and accessible, evidence-informed, community-based care, working closely with policymakers so research moves quickly into practice.

Advancing global primary health care

We will support the transition to primary health care-oriented systems worldwide, improving equitable access to essential services and contributing to Universal Health Coverage.

Developing financially and environmentally sustainable health systems

We will identify and help deliver cost-effective models of care while reducing healthcare’s environmental footprint on the path to net zero.

  • Aziz Sheikh
    Aziz Sheikh

    Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Head of Department and Nuffield Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences

"The scale of the challenges facing health care today demands bold, collaborative action. Our goal is to catalyse the move to primary health care-based models locally, nationally and globally. We invite all those who share our vision and values to work with us in improving health and transforming lives – for all."

From small beginnings to global impact

We're a relatively young Department with an ambitious mission. Our undergraduate teaching was formally recognised in 1997, and we became an independent Department in 2011. Since then, we've grown from 70 staff to more than 500, with research that shapes clinical guidelines, influences health policy, and improves lives.

Our researchers helped identify the first effective community treatment for COVID-19. We've changed how the NHS supports people who want to lose weight, improved early recognition of serious illness in children, and transformed diagnostic pathways for conditions like diabetes, heart failure, and hypertension. We work closely with patients and the public to make sure our research addresses what matters most.

Today, under the leadership of Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh OBE, we continue to grow – with over 500 staff, around 90 GP tutors, more than 200 MSc students, and over 130 DPhil students from across the world.

What we do

We focus on prevention, early diagnosis and the management of common and long-term conditions in community settings. Our work helps the National Health Service and health systems worldwide provide accessible, evidence-informed care closer to home – supported by responsible use of data and artificial intelligence.

Our research draws on some of the UK's most important primary care data sources, including CPRD, OpenSAFELY (in partnership with NHS England), and the Oxford-Royal College of GPs Research and Surveillance Centre. We use linked health records and artificial intelligence responsibly – to support better planning, more personalised care, and earlier prevention.

We're home to a dedicated Primary Care Clinical Trials Unit and to world-leading research centres including the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science, and the Oxford Institute of Digital Health.

And we train the next generation: we teach the Primary Care portion of the undergraduate degree in medicine, placing students in GP practices as part of their training, as well as teaching Evidence-Based Medicine and Medical Statistics to undergraduates. We run Master’s and DPhil programmes in Primary Health Care, Evidence-Based Health Care, Translational Health Sciences, Applied Digital Health, and Global Healthcare Leadership.

OUR people and culture

People are the foundation of the Department’s success and our academic, research, and professional services staff are critical to our future. We hold a Gold Athena Swan award (awarded in March 2023 and the first Gold in the University of Oxford) to recognise advancement of gender equality: representation, progression and success for all. Our values shape how we work: we aim to be trustworthy and accountable, creative, fair, collaborative, respectful and kind.