 |
25th Anniversary Conference
|
 |
Return to Conference Home Page
Thursday, February 24
8:30-10 am
"Citizen Partnership in the Health Care Practice:
The Families and Democracy Project"
William Doherty, PhD, and Tai J. Mendenhall,
PhD; University of Minnesota
The next step
beyond collaborative care with families is to
involve patients and families as citizens and
co-producers of healthcare. The Families and Democracy Project uses a democratic process for building initiatives that tap the knowledge, wisdom, and energy of community members to make a difference in the lives of people dealing with problems such as diabetes and depression. The presentation will describe this model of citizen health care and exemplify it with a project that involves young people and parents reaching out to families newly dealing with diabetes. A leader family will be part of the presentation.
William J. Doherty, PhD, is professor in the Department of Family Social Science and director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota. He has been a leader in family-centered health care since the 1983 publication of the book Family Therapy and Family Medicine (with Mac Baird). He currently directs the Families and Democracy Project, which aims to develop the theory and practice of democratic public work by health care professionals and family educators.
Tai Mendenhall, PhD, is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, where he received his PhD degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. Specializing in collaborative family health care, a great deal of Dr Mendenhall's training encompassed multidisciplinary efforts across classroom, clinical, and community contexts. During his doctoral program, Dr Mendenhall served as the co-director for behavioral health education at Ramsey Family Physicians clinic in St Paul for 3 years and completed a year-long intensive training in psychiatry and behavioral
medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina. He is now an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota and the director of Behavioral Medicine at the University's St John's Family Practice Training and Residency Program.
Dr Mendenhall's principal investigative interests include community engagement and participatory action research, individual and family-oriented diabetes intervention, and motivating patients to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles. He enjoys teaching and public speaking, motorcycling, sailing, running, and home-improvement projects.
Friday, February 25
8:30-9:45 am
"Dialogue in Care and in Conflict: Inviting Connection, Surfacing Enduring Purposes, Making Space for What Is Hard to Hear and Hard to Say"
Sallyann Roth, MSW, Medford, Mass
What conditions make it possible for useach of usto listen with care, with generosity, and with full presence to those with whom we differ on issues of values, world views, and identity? What conditions make it possible for us to listen and to speak openly and fully with those whom we see as opponents in a world and in a time when differences are so often expressed in silence and separation or in acts of verbal and even physical violence? What conditions make it possible to speak from our hearts about what matters to us and why with those whom we perceive to be our opponents?
The Public Conversations Project has been working to answer these questions since its inception in 1989, bringing together opponents on issues experienced as intractable. Some premises that undergird that work will form the heart of this talk. These premises include:
•The way that we speak with each other shapes what we see as possible.
•Conversation that shifts relationships and stories (not positions) surfaces unnoticed and undeveloped possibilities.
•Collaborative preparation for difficult conversations invites connection.
•Language matters.
This talk will address specific ways that the Project has put these premises into action and promote reflection on what they might have to offer in medical settings.
Sallyann Roth, MSW, is a founding member of and facilitator and trainer for the Public Conversations Project, Watertown, Mass. She was a codirector of the Family Institute of Cambridge (a training institute for family therapists) for more than 16 years, where she codeveloped its Program in Narrative Therapies and remains on the faculty. She taught for many years in the Masters Programs at both Smith and Simmons Schools of Social Work and is an Associate of the Taos Institute. A consultant to the Interpersonal Skills Component of the Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, Sallyann also maintains a clinical practice in the Boston area.
Her published work has focused on narrative inquiry, communication issues, couple therapy, and the work of the Public Conversations Project. She serves on the editorial boards of Family Process, The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, and Sistemas Familiares. Common to all of her work is a commitment to design, cultivate, and support ways for people who have been disconnected to connect through finding ways to speak what has seemed too difficult to speak and through hearing what has been too difficult to hear. Her current writing and training focus on working to engender and facilitate inner and outer dialogue (encouraging a deeply experienced connection with sometimes-censored dialogues and freshly emerging ones), the discovery of choice where none was apparent, and helping people work toward their constructive enduring purposes.
Saturday, February 26
8:00-9:00 am
Family Medicine's New Model Practice:
Moving From What to What?
Larry Green, MD, Prescription for Health, University of Colorado
A transformative change of frontline medical practice
is underway in the United States. The compass headings for this
change confirm the centrality of a medical home for everyone and point
toward immediate opportunities for teachers and leaders. The performance gap, now well recognized, engenders a sense of urgency in getting on with, not a few adjustments here and there, but a make-over. There is a lot of work to do, and STFM and the other national organizations committed to family medicine and the rest of primary care share responsibility to get it done, now. In the new practice, the skills long nurtured at this conference collaborating in providing care, engaging with the community, and providing care that is informed by and engaged with the patients' relational network will be crucial to the realization of the change.
Larry A. Green, MD, is the senior scholar in residence of The Robert Graham Center: Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care, which opened in 1999 in Washington, DC. He also continues to serve on the faculty of the University of Colorado, where he is professor of Family Medicine and Director of the National Program Office for Prescription for Health.
Prescription for Health is a 5-year practice-based research initiative launched in 2002 that is focused on health behavior change, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr Green completed his residency in family medicine at the University of Rochester and Highland Hospital and entered practice in Arkansas in the National Health Services Corps, after which he joined the faculty at the University of Colorado. Dr Green was the Woodward-Chisholm Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado for 14 years.
Much of his career has been focused on developing practice-based, primary care research networks. Dr. Green practices as a certified Diplomate of the American Board of Family Practice. He is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, the World Organization of Family Doctors, and the North American Primary Care Research Group. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine.