Rate My Professor Tim Stokes

Professor Tim Stokes is the Elaine Gurr Professor of General Practice in the Department of Primary Health Care, Dunedin School of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Otago. A qualified general practitioner practising part-time in Dunedin, he holds an MA from Oxford, MPhil from Cambridge, MB ChB from Edinburgh, MPH from Nottingham, PhD in health services research from Leicester, and MD from Otago awarded in 2024 for published original research of special excellence in medical science. Originally from the United Kingdom as an academic general practitioner, Stokes joined the University of Otago in 2014. His prior appointments include Senior Clinical Lecturer in Primary Care at the University of Birmingham (2013–2014), Consultant Clinical Adviser at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), Visiting Professor at the Universities of Leicester and Leeds (2006–2013), and Lecturer then Senior Lecturer in General Practice at the University of Leicester (1997–2006). He currently serves as Head of the Department of General Practice and Rural Health, Co-Director and Theme Leader for Health Care Delivery at the Centre for Health Systems and Technology (CHeST), and international collaborator on the ASPIRE UK National Institute for Health Research Programme.

Tim Stokes specialises in health services research focused on primary care delivery and implementation science. His work employs quantitative and qualitative methodologies to investigate embedding research findings into routine clinical, organisational, and policy contexts, developing theory-informed quality improvement interventions. Much of his two-decade career has involved deprived populations and developing clinical guidelines for NICE on conditions including coughs and colds, epilepsy, and obesity. Key publications encompass 'Multimorbidity, clinical decision making and health care utilisation in general practice' (2017), 'Practice-level quality improvement interventions in primary care: a systematic review' (2015), 'HealthPathways implementation in a New Zealand health region: a qualitative study using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research' (2018), and editorials such as 'Equitable access to primary health care: better availability of GP appointments is only one piece of the jigsaw' (2025) and 'From general practice to primary health care: the importance of context' (2026), both in the Journal of Primary Health Care, where he serves as Editor-in-Chief. Stokes has received the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners award for promoting general practice and rural health (2023) and contributed to establishing a national profile in healthcare quality improvement.