Being able to register to a GP near where you are studying as well as in your home town is important as students may need medical care or access to sexual health services whilst ay University. Being able to register at a local GP whilst at a temporary address is important and therefore this campaign enables students to have access to medical care whilst at University. Over the past 12 months this is all that has been achieved by Chris Dow (VP).
August 2019 Chris Dow (VP) met with Citizens Leeds (UK) to start discussions about the GP Dual Registration campaign and what he was hoping to achieve.
Within just a few months the campaign was starting to become successful. Over the winter Chris met with Leeds Citizens again to develop a strategy to go forward and build power to lobby the NHS/GPs. Chris accompanied 10 students to Ireland Wood GP surgery which is linked to New Croft Surgery (the main surgery for LTU students) and discussed how difficult it was to register as a student. A lack of representation and communication between the GP surgery and students on campus was also noted.
In January the GP registration campaign moved away from the national campaign in order for the focus to switch to putting LTU students health first. This is after we recognised the difficulties both students and the local GP surgery were facing when it came to registering students. To combat this problem the 'Student Health' page on the LTU website is being updated with the correct link to the Surgery website. The Deputy Manager of the GP surgery is working towards a standardised registration form that can be completed either online or in-person at Student Support, or from New Croft Reception.
February was a good month in terms of goals being hit for this campaign; the first phase has been completed which focused on helping LTU students with their health locally and changing how they can register at local GP’s to make it quick simple and easy. Now that these problems have been solved locally Chris aims to collaborate with Citizens Leeds again to push this campaign nationally. Events surrounding this next phase have unfortunately been paused due to Covid-19 however, when it is safe to do so the focus will over again be on tackling wider issues surrounding Student dual registration at GPs.