Committee Reports

Communications Committee Report

I would first like to begin this report by thanking the members of the Communications Committee who have so wonderfully served the Society: Judith Gravdal, MD; David Quillen, MD; Lucille Marchand, BSN, MD; Antonnette Graham, PhD; Anne Musser, DO; Monique Davis-Smith, MD; and Tom Agresta, MD. They continuously help meet the committee’s responsibilities, and their dedication and great insight can be seen in the many communications services offered by the Society. The committee is ably staffed by STFM Communications Director Traci Nolte.

Some highlights of the committee’s work include:

Family Medicine
The journal is our main and best-known publication, and it is one of our most-identified products. Editor Barry Weiss, MD, and Associate Editors Mindy Smith, MD, MS, and Mike Magill, MD, do an excellent job in journal oversight, development, and maintenance of quality. Our columns (For the Office-based Teacher of Family Medicine—Editor William Huang, MD; Innovations in Family Medicine Education—Editor Josh Freeman, MD, and Coeditor Alison Dobbie, MD; Lessons From Our Learners—Editor William Grant, EdD; Literature and the Arts in Family Medicine Education—Editor Johanna Shapiro, PhD; Book Reviews—Editor Cathleen Morrow, MD; International Family Medicine—Editor Jack Rodnick, MD; and Letters to the Editor—Editor Karl Miller, MD) add both interest and value to our editorial mix.

The journal has cultivated its niche as the scholarly journal for family medicine education topics, and it is increasingly recognized in national and international circles. Current and archived full-text journal articles, along with advertising information and instructions for authors, are available on the public side of our Web site, www.stfm.org, offering better distribution and recognition of our members’ scholarly works. Family Medicine on-line continues to be one of the most-visited pages of the STFM Web site.

Awards
One of the committee’s most rewarding duties is recommending honorees to the Board for the annual STFM Excellence in Education, Recognition, and Innovative Program awards. It is a pleasure to review the nominations of outstanding members and their great accomplishments. This year’s nominees were no exception, and the committee has recommended highly deserving awardees who are a credit to STFM. Although everyone cannot be awarded these top honors, we congratulate all nominees on their accomplishments, and we thank them for their efforts. We encourage you to nominate deserving colleagues for next year’s consideration.

STFM Bookstore
This year, the Communications Committee recommended that STFM become an Amazon.com affiliate. This is exciting for STFM and its membership because through this affiliation, STFM will continue to market members’ books through our portal at www.stfm.org/bookstore, and members will be able to benefit from the advanced technology Amazon.com uses to expedite and track shipments and recommend related books.

STFM is given a small percentage of all transactions (books, cameras, clothing, anything that Amazon.com sells) as long as the initial link was made through our STFM Amazon.com portal. You don’t have to be an STFM member for the organization to get credit, as long as the purchase goes through our portal. These proceeds will help us continue our financial commitments to important activities like the Annals of Family Medicine and Future of Family Medicine programs.

STFM will still market our members’ books at our conferences and we have developed an enhanced marketing plan to promote our members’ books. We’ll also maintain our review process that allows members to add new books to our recommended offerings listed at www.stfm.org/bookstore.

Electronic Communications
Our Web site, www.stfm.org, averages more than 25,000 unique visitors a month. The STFM Web site offers members online conference submission and registration, membership update and renewal, various links to family medicine education resources, STFM group information, STFM Bookstore offerings, and online full-text Family Medicine articles and classified ads.

The Communications Committee has begun discussing new features they would like to see introduced in a Web site redesign that is planned for late 2006. The Web site redesign will include ways for members to easily access the Society information that is most relevant to them with the establishment of a “My STFM” area for STFM members.

Beginning in February 2006, the STFM Messenger moved to a monthly online newsletter. It contains Society news, conference updates, member kudos, STFM group activities, and special features. Moving to a monthly e-newsletter allows us to communicate STFM news more regularly to our membership than we could with our bimonthly print document. Each month, members with e-mail addresses on file with STFM receive an e-mail with links to the Messenger's online stories. Members can access the Messenger's current issue as well as its archives on the STFM Web site at www.stfm.org/Messenger.

STFM continues to develop its Family Medicine Digital Resources Library (FMDRL). This library, funded through a 3-year grant from the National Library of Medicine, includes curriculum materials from all levels of family medicine education: preclinical, clinical, predoctoral, residency, and faculty development. More than 300 resources now reside on the FMDRL Web site, www.fmdrl.org.

FMDRL leadership has also entered into a collaborative agreement with MedEdPortal (AAMC’s new digital library) to share resources. The collaboration will allow family medicine educators to share their materials with a broader educational community by having materials indexed and available on both sites. Watch for more information about this successful collaboration in the near future The Communications Committee is monitoring the progress of this grant and will help with the involvement of STFM groups in this exciting project.

The STFM electronic preceptor newsletter, The Teaching Physician, continues to be popular; more than 90 subscriptions have been purchased by departments and residency programs. Each subscription has the ability to touch hundreds of preceptors throughout the nation, ensuring great communication to this important segment of family medicine educators. We thank our volunteer editors of this newsletter: Thomas Agresta, MD; Alec Chessman, MD; Mark Ebell, MD, MS; Betty Gatipon, MD; Caryl Heaton, DO; William Huang, MD; and Richard Usatine, MD, for their dedicated service to this valuable resource. For more information about this newsletter, visit www.stfm.org/teachingphysician/index.htm.

Monograph Review
Committee members serve as content reviewers for monograph publications under development by STFM groups. This past year, the Committee worked with the Group on Oral Health to produce the popular, “Smiles for Life, a Oral Health Curriculum.” We are also currently working with the  Group on Pain Management and Palliative Care on a monograph to be released in conjunction with the 2006 Annual Spring Conference.

Groups that are considering submitting monographs to STFM for publication should review the Monograph Submission Guidelines listed on the STFM Web site at www.stfm.org/monogph.html.

Jacob Reider, MD, Chair

Communications Committee

Jacob Reider, MD, Chair
Albany Medical College

Thomas Agresta, MD
University of Connecticut

Y. Monique Davis-Smith, MD
Mercer University

Antonnette Graham, PhD
Case Western Reserve University

Judith Gravdal MD
Lutheran Family Practice
Park Ridge, ll

Lucille Marchand, BSN, MD
University of Wisconsin

Anne Musser, DO
Alaska Family Medicine Residency
Anchorage, AK

David Quillen, MD
University of Florida

EX OFFICIO:
Barry Weiss, MD
University of Arizona
Editor, Family Medicine

STFM Staff Liaison
Traci Nolte