Ryuki Kassai

Professor of Community and Family Medicine, Fukushima University, Japan

Dr Ryuki Kassai is a founding Professor and Chair of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan. He is Vice President and Chairman of assessment of the Japanese Academy of Family Medicine.

Dr Kassai graduated from Hokkaido University School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan in 1984, and took clinical trainings in pediatrics and pediatric neurology before going to Canada to serve as Resident in family practice at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. After completing his residency training including an elective study of the principles of family medicine under Prof Ian R. McWhinney, Dr Kassai went back to Japan and joined Kawasaki Medical School, Kurashiki, Japan in 1992 as Assistant Professor of primary care medicine. In 1996 he moved to Hokkaido and became a founding Director and Chair of the Hokkaido Centre for Family Medicine (HCFM), and started in 1997 the first formal general practice/family medicine training programme in Japan. After having made the HCFM a successful model of vocational training scheme, Dr Kassai moved to Fukushima (northeast of the main island of Japan) to found the first medical school department of community-based general practice/family medicine in Japan ever at Fukushima Medical University in March 2006. He is now trying to construct prefecture-wide, and then nation-wide sound systems of general practice/family medicine in Japan.