Committee Reports

Research Committee Report

The STFM Research Committee is responsible for promoting and facilitating research among the members of STFM and in the discipline as a whole. Since STFM is the leading US organization dedicated to family medicine education and training, the primary focus of STFM is the interface between research and education. Research here is defined broadly, as the “generation of new knowledge.” This includes not only traditional investigator-initiated research but also evaluation of clinical programs (such as occurs with performance improvement) and educational programs, as well as scientific inquiry in general. The target audience for the STFM Research Committee includes ALL members of STFM, not just those who are primarily researchers. This concept is in line with the Future of Family Medicine goal that all family physicians should be actively involved in the generation of new knowledge. It is recognized that only a small percentage of this audience will consist of “career researchers” but that many in this audience will teach various research skills and methods to learners at all levels of medical education. Much of our audience is therefore made up of educators, clinician-educators, and those who are training to be educators and clinicians. Therefore, a major focus of the committee is on the type of research that is most relevant to this majority audience—evaluation of clinical quality and education.

While this focus has been part of the committee’s agenda in previous years, this year the committee has developed strategies to specifically address this focus. These strategies have been endorsed by the STFM Board of Directors and include the following:

1. Include a particular focus on high-quality “quality improvement” projects for Research Forums and Posters at the STFM Annual Spring Conference.
2. Expand the Fellows-Works-in-Progress Posters at the Annual Spring Conference to include medical students and residents and actively market and solicit these proposals among training programs. This year we received double the normal number of submissions and will be having the largest ever number (60) of these posters presented at the Annual Spring Conference.
3. Hold a special session at the Annual Spring Conference for presentation of Best Resident Research Papers. These papers will be those selected by the AAFP Commission on Science for the Resident Scholar Award. This year we have three awardees that will be presented at the annual meeting.
4. Hold special sessions at the Annual Spring Conference for development of skills in quality improvement evaluation methods. This year we will have two such sessions: “Using Electronic Health Records for Quality Improvement Research” and “Designing for Dissemination: Quality Improvement.”
5. Hold special sessions at the annual meeting for development of skills in education evaluation methods. This year we will hold a session on “Teaching Rigorous Evaluation Methods for Educational Programs.”
6. Hold special sessions at the annual meeting for development of skills in teaching research and evaluation methods to family medicine residents. This year we will hold two such sessions at the annual meeting.
7. Facilitate the creation of an STFM Group on “Teaching Research to Family Medicine Residents.” This group will make special efforts to encourage the participation of STFM members involved in the teaching of research to residents in community-based residency programs. This group has now been officially formed, with cochairs Sandra Burge, PhD, and Sally Weaver, PhD, MD. The group will have its first in-person meeting at the annual meeting. You can join this STFM group by going to www.stfm.org and clicking on Member Information and then Join a Group.
8. Create a Web site for distribution and sharing of tools and techniques that can be used for teaching resident research and evaluation skills. This is now a “Wiki” site on FMDRL, coordinated by Research Committee member Caroline Richardson, MD.
9. Work with the Annual Spring Conference Program Committee to determine ways that the STFM Research Committee can help to facilitate the “creation of new knowledge” throughout the STFM annual meeting.
10. Work with planning committees for other STFM meetings to determine ways that the STFM Research Committee can assist in the development of research and evaluation skills for members participating in these meetings. We have developed a joint task force of the Research Committee, the Program Committee, and the Education Committee to determine the best strategies for this.
11. Work collaboratively with other organizations in the family of family medicine to facilitate the generation of new knowledge. This year we will co-sponsor sessions at the AFMRD Program Directors’ Workshop and the STFM/AAFP joint Practice Improvement Conference.

While a major focus is now on research for persons who are not career researchers, the Research Committee will continue with previous strategies that address the needs of more traditional family medicine researchers. These include:

12. Continue to sponsor the Research Forum and Research Posters at the annual meeting for presentation of original research. This year we will have six forums of four presentations each, as well as 32 posters.
13. Continue to recognize Distinguished Papers for presentation at the annual meeting. This year’s winners are William Miser, MD, MA, and Donna Cohen, MD, MSc, both of whom will be presenting their work at the annual meeting.
14. Continue to select and recognize the Best Published Paper among STFM members. This year’s winner is Daniel Merenstein, MD, for his paper titled “The Trial of Infant Response to Diphenhydramine: the TIRED Study, a Randomized Controlled Patient-oriented Trial, which was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. This paper will be presented at the annual meeting. Also presented at the poster sessions will be the three honorable mentions for Best Published Paper Award, with first authors Mimi Tarn, MD, MPH; Dean Seehusen, MD, MPH; and Patrick Fahey, MD.

Also as part of the Annual Spring Conference, we will highlight this year’s winner of the Hames Award, a career award for family medicine researchers. This year’s recipient, Howard Rabinowitz, MD, from Thomas Jefferson University, will discuss his work in research in family medicine. Finally, the research plenary address will be delivered by John Saultz, MD, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, who will discuss research regarding the attributes of the patient- centered medical home (PCMH).

Since the theme for STFM for this year is the PCMH, the STFM Research Committee will also be conducting a study that will examine the extent to which family medicine clinical clerkship sites have achieved the principles of the PCMH. The study will be carried out by co-principal investigators John Saultz, MD, and Shawn Blanchard, MD, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, with two co-investigators from the Research Committee (Patty Carney, PhD, and James Gill, MD, MPH) and with oversight by the entire Research Committee. This study was funded by the STFM Board of Directors and is part of a larger project to determine whether the attainment of these PCMH principles improves over time and which interventions or factors are most likely to lead to such improvement. Also, STFM is collaborating with the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics on a large conference regarding the PCMH. The lead person for STFM is Research Committee Chair James Gill, MD, MPH.

To facilitate the goal of advancing research in the discipline of family medicine as a whole, the Research Committee is also active with other organizations dealing with family medicine scholarship. The Research Committee chair serves as STFM representative to the Committee on Advancing the Science of Family Medicine, the Board of Directors of the North American Primary Care Research Group, and the Board of Directors of the Family Physicians’ Inquiries Network. A member of the committee (Richelle Koopman, MD, MS) also serves as the STFM liaison to the AAFP Commission on Science. Actions that impact family medicine research are reported to the Research Committee, with subsequent discussion and recommendations reported to the STFM Board of Directors when appropriate.
 
Another effort from STFM to promote family medicine research has been its continued partnership with other family medicine organizations to support the premier research journal for our discipline, the Annals of Family Medicine. We continue to value this journal’s contribution to the scientific advancement of our specialty, and we hope that STFM members will continue their submission of manuscripts and their active readership.

I would like to thank the committee and Staff Liaison Kay Frank for their hard work and dedication to this committee and to STFM.

Research Committee

James Gill, MD, MPH, Chair
Delaware Valley Outcomes Research
Department of Family Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University

Andrew Bazemore, MD, MPH
Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care
Washington, DC

Patricia Carney, PhD
Oregon Health and Science University
 
Fredrick Chen, MD, MPH
University of Washington

Jesse Crosson, PhD
UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School
 
Richelle Koopman, MD, MS
Medical University of South Carolina

M. Norman Oliver, MD
University of Virginia
 
Caroline Richardson, MD
University of Michigan
Fellow Representative

Fellow
Sean Lucan, MD, MPH
University of Pennsylvania

AAFP Liaison to Committee
James Mold, MD, MPH
University of Oklahoma
 
STFM Staff Liaison
Kay Frank