Board Reports

President's Report

William K. Mygdal, EdD

I am honored to have served as president of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine this year. Since May 2004, when I asked for your vote for the office of president-elect, I have emphasized three overarching issues to which STFM needs to give serious and continuing attention: (1) developing new partnerships with groups who can help family medicine educators secure funding for their educational efforts, (2) continuing STFM’s role as a primary source for personal and professional renewal, and (3) positioning STFM to make a meaningful contribution to the emerging New Model of family medicine. I am pleased to report that we’ve moved forward in all three areas. From the vantage point of 2 years’ immersion in these and other issues as your president-elect and president, I will use this Annual Report to review our progress.

The New Partners Initiative
Cutbacks in funding of Title VII of the Public Health Service Act—long anticipated but staved off through intensive lobbying for over a decade—finally took place at the end of December 2005. Total Title VII support was reduced from $88 million to $41 million. Currently funded projects will be able to complete most planned activities, but no new requests for proposals will be forthcoming. This change is a real setback because Title VII has been a key support for family medicine education efforts; its loss will mean significant adjustments. It is important, however, that we not get seduced into feeling sorry for ourselves; as teachers of family medicine we have enjoyed a great run of Title VII support and built innovative and effective educational programs. Now we need to develop new skills and attitudes centering on academic fund-raising.

In this regard I’m pleased to note that implementation of STFM’s New Partnership Initiative (NPI) is well underway and has accomplished significant benchmarks. NPI helps STFM members “develop new relationships and identify mutual interests” with private, public, and governmental partners. Our initial Academic Fund-raising Workshop, presented by the Family Medicine Education Consortium in December, was a spectacular success. Twenty-seven mid- and senior-level family medicine leaders participated, and five will complete an intensive fellowship during the coming year. A second workshop will be offered in conjunction with the Annual Spring Conference in April 2006. I thank the many individuals and groups who have contributed to this success, especially our NPI Think Tank and the Family Medicine Education Consortium.

Personal and Professional Renewal
Faculty development is one of our Society’s core values and has been the foundation of our meetings and our educational projects over the past 30 years. I am pleased that exciting and creative activities keep welling up from among the membership, staff, and Board. Some examples:
• The Board has approved the STFM Predoctoral Directors Institute, to be offered for the first time during the coming year. It will meet a strong need, as has the program director fellowship on which the new institute is modeled.
• The Patient Education Conference has been refocused as the Conference on Practice Improvement: Health Information and Patient Education. The conference’s reframed purpose has generated great interest and holds promise for helping our academic and private practices to realize family medicine’s new model.
• The Forum for Behavioral Science in Family Medicine, now cosponsored by STFM and the Medical College of  Wisconsin, has shown increased attendance and exciting programming.
• I was privileged to attend and speak at the recent Predoctoral Education and Families and Health conferences. Both were well-attended, energetic, and vital meetings.

For the past year, through its strategic planning processes, the STFM Board and staff have also been giving careful consideration to our programs and conferences and the degree to which they meet the needs of members and our discipline. We are examining the structure and process for our major conferences to make sure that they both offer an opportunity for you to present your scholarship and also to examine the issues that confront our specialty. Currently we are refining a set of “funding magnets” for which we will begin to seek partners and support, including a fellowship for minority faculty.

All who practice and teach family medicine are the beneficiaries of the Future of Family Medicine (FFM) project, an extraordinary effort from 2002 to 2004 to study and plan for our common future. We are now in the implementation phase, during which each organization in the family of family medicine has responsibility for one or more strategic initiatives. STFM is charged with Strategic Initiative 8: Promoting a Sufficient Family Medicine Workforce.

The New Model of Family Medicine
Last spring, the Board approved a Special Task Force to refine and clarify our approach, with John Rogers, MD, MPH, as chair. The task force has done remarkable work, having identified and begun work on five priority programs: (1) a competency-based curriculum to teach students and residents about the New Model, (2) education for preceptors in the New Model, (3) FFM programming at all STFM conferences, (4) premedical school recruitment, and (5) a curriculum on communication skills and cultural competency. I’m satisfied that STFM is making real progress in helping to realize the New (now called the TransforMED) Model of practice. Space does not permit me to convey all the exciting developments in this area, but I am extremely encouraged to note that firm plans are in hand to identify and support 20 (instead of just two) residency demonstration sites. These sites will be locales in which we can study, learn, and show the value of the New Model, and they bode well for the vitality of our future.

The Big Picture
I want to mention several other signs of progress. First, our financial picture is improving steadily. Three factors have caused the Society to operate in the red for several years: the financial hit from cancellation of the 2003 Toronto Annual Spring Conference, the loss of contract income from the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Board’s decision to make significant yearly contributions to the spectacularly successful Annals of Family Medicine journal. Fortunately, through the hard work and the frugal approaches of the Board and staff, we are nearly out of the woods. We are hopeful that STFM itself will develop new partners and new sources of support in the next several years.

Second, membership is growing, the results of outreach by the Membership Committee and by conferences and services that you find helpful. We are eager for feedback and ways to improve what we offer to you.

Third, our legislative and other advocacy efforts have been especially active and productive this year. Although we took a hit on Title VII, we headed off much worse scenarios. We are deeply indebted to members of the Legislative Committee and to Hope Wittenberg, MA, STFM’s Government Relations Director. There is much more work ahead.

Lastly, I want to thank my fellow Board members and the STFM staff for their incredible support and colleagueship during the past year, a time that has flown past and has been full of absorbing and productive challenges. Thanks for your involvement and commitment to the future of family medicine.