Committee Reports

Communications Committee Report

During this year the Communications Committee spent some time analyzing the duties of the committee and developing a purpose statement that will guide the committee for the future.
 
Purpose: To inform and connect our members by communicating their work (lives).

Goals:

1. Support social networking
2. Communicating information about the Society. (How we work)
3. Communicating information from external sources.
4. Communicating information about the work that we do.
5. Inform the Society about best practices (new and innovative) in communication methods and strategies for the Society

In 2008, we will continue to develop the committee’s direction and align our  activities under the above goals and the Society’s Core Purpose and Core Values. 
I would like to thank our outgoing members of the Communications Committee: Thomas Agresta, MD; Monique Davis-Smith, MD; Antonnette Graham, PhD; MPH; Lucille Marchand, BSN, MD; and Anne Musser, DO, as well as committee members Paul Gordon, MD, and Richard Neill, MD, who will begin serving a second 2-year term in May. They continuously meet the committee’s responsibilities, and their dedication and thoughtful deliberation can be seen in the many communications services offered by the Society. The committee is 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 Arch Mainous, PhD, do an excellent job in journal oversight, development, and maintenance of quality.
 
Our feature columns (For the Office-based Teacher of Family Medicine—Editor John Delzell, Jr, MD, MSPH; 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, and Coeditor Dean Gianakos, MD; Book Reviews—Editor Cathleen Morrow, MD, and Coeditor William Ventres, MD, MA; and Letters to the Editor—Editor Joseph Scherger, MD, MPH) add both interest and value to our editorial mix. This year, we also experienced sadness at the passing of two of our journal department editors, Jack Rodnick, MD, (International Family Medicine Education) and Karl Miller, MD (Letters to the Editor). They are greatly missed.

Dr Rodnick also spearheaded the development of our dedicated issue on Global Family Medicine Education. Family Medicine joined more than 230 other medical journals that published a global theme issue on poverty and human development on October 22, 2007.

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 online continues to be the most-visited page of the STFM Web site.

Awards
One of the committee’s most important tasks is selecting the recipients of three of the Society’s annual awards: Recognition, Excellence in Education, and Innovative Program awards. It is both inspiring and humbling to review the accomplishments of the outstanding members who are nominated. This year’s nominees were no exception, and the committee has recommended highly deserving awardees who are a credit to STFM. The selection process inevitably leaves outstanding individuals and projects without the public recognition of awards. We congratulate all the nominees on their accomplishments, and we thank the nominators for their efforts. We rely on you, the members, to identify and nominate deserving colleagues for next year’s consideration. We hope to make this award process more visible as appropriate to this celebration of our members’ accomplishments.

STFM Bookstore
The STFM Bookstore is now an Amazon.com affiliate. This means that STFM continues to market members’ books and other titles that are identified to be of interest to our members through our portal at www.stfm.org/bookstore without the financial burden of holding a stock of 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. So spread the word and have your friends and colleagues bookmark our portal link, www.stfm.org/bookstore. Proceeds from our bookstore link will help us continue our financial commitments to important activities like the Annals of Family Medicine and Future of Family Medicine programs.

STFM will promote books listed from our recommended list at our conferences. These books are placed on our recommended list after undergoing a review process. For more information on our Bookstore review process, visit www.stfm.org/bookstore/peerreview.cfm.

Electronic Communications
Our Web site, www.stfm.org, averages 15,000 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 through our Amazon portal, and online full-text Family Medicine articles and classified ads.
The Web site redesign is underway. It 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. We are also looking for ways that the Web site can convey the unique culture of STFM that we all experience at our meetings.

STFM continues to develop its Family Medicine Digital Resources Library (FMDRL). This library, initially 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 1,200 resources now reside on the FMDRL Web site, www.fmdrl.org. In 2007, STFM also introduced collaborative work areas for the STFM groups within FMDRL. All groups have access to a listserve, as well as collaborative Webspaces for their work.

The STFM Messenger, the Society’s e-newsletter, continues to be a valuable source of Society news for members. This year it contained a series of special reports from the STFM Board of Directors related to the patient–centered medical home. It also contains all the information members need to keep up to date on the activities of the Society. You can visit the Messenger archive at http://www.stfm.org/messenger/index.html

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; John Delzell, Jr, MD, MSPH; Mark Ebell, MD, MS; Betty Gatipon, MD; Caryl Heaton, DO; Diana Heiman, MD; Jon Neher, 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.

Elizabeth Naumburg, MD, Chair

Communications Committee

Elizabeth Naumburg, MD, Chair
University of Rochester

Thomas Agresta, MD
University of Connecticut

Y. Monique Davis-Smith, MD
Mercer University

Antonnette Graham, PhD
Case Western Reserve University

Paul Gordon, MD, MPH
University of Arizona

Lucille Lomas Marchand, BSN, MD
University of Wisconsin

Anne Musser, DO
Alaska Family Medicine Residency
Anchorage, Alaska

Richard Neill, MD
University of Pennsylvania

STFM Staff Liaison:
Traci Nolte