WONCA is an unusual, yet convenient acronym comprising the first five initials of the World Organization of National Colleges, Academies and Academic Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians. WONCA's short name is World Organization of Family Doctors.

The World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) is a not-for-profit organization and was founded in 1972 by member organizations in 18 countries. WONCA now has 118 Member Organizations in 131 countries and territories with membership of about 500,000 family doctors and more than 90 per cent of the world’s population. This includes eight organizations in collaborative relations with WONCA. There are some 21 members in the Academic membership category, which consists of Academic Departments of Family Medicine. Over 800 individual general practitioners and family physicians have chosen to join WONCA in their own right. The Mission of WONCA is to improve the quality of life of the peoples of the world through defining and promoting its values, including respect for universal human rights and including gender equity, and by fostering high standards of care in general practice/family.

WONCA Europe Conference 2016 will be held in Copenhagen on 15-18 June 2016. "Family Doctors with heads and hearts" is the thought-provoking theme of 2016 WONCA Europe Conference which will be held in Copenhagen in June 2016. Posters, one-slide presentations, oral presentations and symposiums/workshops form together with the keynote presentations the basis for the scientific program. These sessions are of 60 or 75 minutes.

The overall theme of the WONCA Europe 2016 is: Family Doctors with Heads and Hearts GPs work in the border-land between medical science and humanity. We must keep our balance and work with our heads and hearts. The specific themes are: The ageing Europe: Europe's population has changed and will change and what does that mean? Are there variations across countries? What about the family structure, income, education? Will there be more diseases or do we live longer and better? Making healthcare affordable: The health care system will change dramatically towards more specialized care, higher costs, more fragmented care etc. How will general practice fit into this? What can family medicine do to preserve and develop its core functions and values? The future consultation: How will general practice develop, what will the content and task be and how will we be able to put science, knowledge into that. How will general practice be able to address future developments and expected tasks? Diagnosing - a vital task for Family medicine: We get more and more focused on our ability to identify physiological changes and risks early, to use technology, and to put together many specialties around the table discussing the patient (who is not there). What about family medicine? How should diagnosing develop there? Inequality in health and specific patient groups: We focus on the possible risk of increasing inequality in health and access to health care in Europe. Both social, mental and age based inequality. We see inequality based on social differences, among specific disease groups like mental diseases and for children and elderly people.

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Dr. Shima Naghavi, Director of International Affairs