Rupert Whitaker
Dr Rupert Whitaker (born 1963) is a psychiatrist, immunologist, and advocate for patients. He is one of Europe’s longest-surviving people with HIV, having contracted the disease in 1981. Following the death of his partner Terrence Higgins from AIDS in 1982, Dr Whitaker co-founded the Terrence Higgins Trust, a charity set up to provide services for people with HIV. In 2007, Dr Whitaker’s professional and personal experiences led to his founding the Tuke Institute, an international organisation researching the health-effectiveness of medical services.
Early life
Rupert Whitaker was educated at Lord Wandsworth College, Hampshire, from which he graduated in 1980 at the age of 17. He came out as gay at school in 1978. In 1981, he attended St. Hild and St. Bede College at Durham University to study philosophy and psychology. While there his partner Terry Higgins became one of the first people to die from AIDS in the UK. Rupert Whitaker became ill himself and transferred to the University of London. He was not expected to live longer than a year.[1]
The Terrence Higgins Trust
In 1982 Rupert Whitaker became involved in raising awareness of a little-known disease referred to at the time as Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (subsequently HIV). Following his involvement in a conference organised by Gay Switchboard, London, he worked primarily with Martyn Butler and Tony Whitehead to develop the Terrence Higgins Trust into a registered charity, establishing its educational, mental health, and buddying services, and raising awareness in the media. The Trust was the first European HIV charity to be founded and is currently one of the leading HIV charities in Europe.
Training and practice
Following the completion of his first degree in 1984, Rupert Whitaker was awarded a fellowship to the University of Toronto to train in psychiatry and biobehavioural science around HIV. He received a scholarship and fellowships to continue university education and training in Canada and the USA for a further 11 years. He received his doctoral qualifications in psychiatry, neurology, and immunology with a 100% grade point average. This was followed by three post-doctoral fellowships in immunology, neurological and social psychiatry at Tufts New England Medical School, University of Michigan Medical School, and the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.
Continuing his work in social justice around health during his studies, Dr Whitaker led the international response to anti-HIV immigration and travel laws; based on his published research in public health with Richard Edwards, he prompted the International AIDS Society to boycott the USA as the location of any future IAS conferences until the laws were changed. The bans were lifted in 2009 and the subsequent IAS conference was held in Washington, DC.
Dr. Whitaker has been an Expert Adviser to the Department of Health UK and a member of numerous committees for specialised commissioning and expert advice on medical research and health service delivery. He has published academic and policy papers in the fields of psychiatry, immunology, neurology, and public health, and has had honorary senior fellowships at various universities. He acts as a forensic expert for the courts, with cases in the UK, Iran, Australia, and Poland, specialising in personal injury, disability, professional negligence, and occupational medicine. However, his work over 30 years in HIV and social justice has been unpaid.
Personal health
In 1993, following his third post-doctoral fellowship, Rupert Whitaker was diagnosed with AIDS at the age of 30. Shortly afterwards he suffered a stroke, which left him with visual, communicative, cognitive, and mobility problems, and required brain surgery which then left him with epilepsy. This was followed by a number of years of intensive rehabilitation, during which time he continued to pursue HIV-related research. In 2006, he was again given less than six months to live because of medications for HIV interacting with his stroke-associated brain-injury, which was misdiagnosed for two years. Due to his experience of health services during this time, he founded the Tuke Institute in 2007.
The Tuke Institute
The Tuke Institute is an independent research organisation of international scientists, clinicians and other professionals that promotes a biopsychosocial framework for integrated health-services. A significant proportion of its contributors have chronic illnesses themselves and wish to change health-services for the better. The Tuke Institute researches patient centredness with the primary focus on how best to help patients get well and stay well. Its methods include measuring an individual’s health from the patient’s perspective, measuring the effectiveness of a health-service in terms of functional health outcomes rather than biomarkers of disease, and how to empower patients to participate in the co-delivery, audit, and governance of services. The Institute also provides traineeships for graduate students wishing to gain experience in the translation of health science into policy and practice.
Other
In 2004, Rupert Whitaker was awarded a Police Commendation for bravery in the apprehension of an armed and violent robber.
References
- ↑ Emily Dugan, "HIV: Thirty years after the first diagnosis, Britain heads for 100,000 cases", The Independent, 23 October 2011.
External links
- Chairman's page on the Tuke Institute Website
- "Rupert Whitaker: 'We have to see patients as people, not collections of diseases'". Interview in The Guardian, 1 February 2011.