A HUDDERSFIELD doctor looks set to live the American dream.

Consultant anaesthetist Dimple Vyas has been selected as one of just four UK health professionals to take part in an international exchange.

The Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust doctor, who has a special interest in chronic pain management, will spend a year in the USA, sharing her health knowledge with the American experts.

As part of the Quality Improvement Fellowship, she will also learn from other doctors in the States.

Dr Vyas is the first health professional in the Yorkshire and Humber region to gain the fellowship.

She will spend a year at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Her focus will be to transform care and drive improvements for patients with long-term conditions, through developing closer working between hospital and community organisations.

On her return to the trust, in June 2013, she will put her learning into practice across our community and at a national level.

Dr Vyas said: “The fellowship is a unique opportunity for me to work alongside leading experts from around the world and look at new ways of working.”

The fellowship has been offered by independent healthcare charity, the Health Foundation.

She has lead two successful initiatives funded by the organisation previously called Co-creating Health.

Since the programme was launched in 2007, hundreds of people across Kirklees and Calderdale living with chronic pain and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD have had their lives transformed through developing the knowledge, skills and confidence to manage their condition.

Programme manager at the Health Foundation, Dorothy Flatman, said: “In recent years there has been increasing interest in the Co-creating Health programme and its achievements.

“With the changing health landscape, the focus on the benefits of self management support has greatly increased.

“The Fellowship programme will help to create a group of key leaders to drive service improvements and make real changes to the quality of healthcare.”