Welcome to the STFM Messenger Online
The STFM Messenger is the official news publication of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.
Each month, members with e-mail addresses on file with STFM will receive an e-mail with links to the Messenger's online stories. Members will be also be able to access the Messenger's current issue as well as its archives on the STFM Web site at www.stfm.org/Messenger.
We welcome your feedback on our member newsletter; send your ideas and comments to Traci Nolte, tnolte@stfm.org.
Registration Reminder—2008 Predoctoral Education Conference
Excitement is building, and we are expecting record attendance for the Predoctoral Education Conference, to be held January 24–27, 2008, in Portland, Ore.
We have multiple sessions geared toward the underserved, the conference theme, as well asthese innovative preconference workshops on Thursday, January 24:
• “Creating and Managing Student-run Free Clinic Projects”
• “Family Medicine and Informatics Education: Rising to the Challenge to Teach Students to Care for Patients in the Information Age”
To learn more about the 2008 conference, and to register on-line, visit: www.stfm.org/predocconf/ pd08/index.htm. If you have any questions or would like additional conference information, contact Margaret Henry at 800-274-2237, ext. 5415, or mhenry@stfm.org.
NOTE: The conference hotel (Marriott Portland Downtown) is sold out. For comparable accommodations within walking distance, call the Residence Inn Portland Downtown at River Place at 503-552-9500 for hotel reservations. Be sure to ask for the special rate for the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM). The Residence Inn is offering a rate of $134 over the dates of our conference. The hotel is located six blocks from the Marriott Portland Downtown, and transportation is available via a free trolley or hotel shuttle.
Attend the Predoctoral Directors Development Institute Just Prior to the Predoctoral Education Conference in Portland
The Predoctoral Directors Development Institute or PDDI, sponsored by the Education Committee and supported by the STFM Group on Predoctoral Education will hold 2 days of formal instruction on January 24, 2008, just before the Predoctoral Education Conference in Portland, Ore, covering the following topics:
- Roles and Activities of Predoctoral Directors
- Curriculum Development and Evaluation
- Learner Observation, Assessment, and Feedback
- Care and Feeding of Preceptors
- Scholarship/Promotion/Publications
- Grant Writing/Extramural Funding 101
- Promoting Student Interest and Knowledge of Family Medicine
- Negotiation Skills
If you are a faculty member in a family medicine department responsible for the courses and advising programs offered to medical students, as well as other administrative responsibilities consistent with the role of predoctoral director, talk to your chair about this faculty development opportunity. Although you may have a few years of experience with predoctoral teaching, this part-time fellowship can help you develop in your role and advance in your career.
Tuition for the fellowship is $1,950 and includes conference registration fees for both the 2008 Predoctoral Education Conference (January 24–27) and the 2008 Annual Spring Conference (April 30–May 4) and the advisor/peer support during and between meetings.
To register, go to www.stfm.org and download your registration form. For more information, contact Katie Margo, MD, at kmargo@mindspring.com.
Registration Is Now Open for the Conference on Families and Health
STFM is calling on members to join us for “The Medical Home Team: Collaborating With Families and Communities to Restructure Health Care” at the 28th Annual Conference on Families and Health, February 28–March 2, at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel in historic New Orleans!
The New Model of Family Medicine practice envisioned in the Future of Family Medicine report, embodying the essential elements of the Patient-centered Medical Home, which all three primary care disciplines have now embraced, is our collective destination. We are all challenged to upgrade our classic family medicine concepts of the “patient-centered, family-oriented, and community-responsive” practice.
To achieve successful transformative “renovations” to our clinical and educational environments in order to create new Medical Homes, we will all need to attend to the following principles:
Identify shared values and goals, whether already held by, or newly developed collectively by, those within our “work families”
Implement systemic change, addressing not just our structures and processes but our communications and metrics for teamwork and outcomes
Think and link creatively, not just within our practices, but “outside the box,” collaborating in novel and evolving ways with patients, families, communities, and payers.
Plenary speakers for the 28th Annual STFM Conference on Families and Health will address these three operating principles for change:
- “Creating a Patient- and Family-centered Practice” Susan Frampton, president, Planetree, Derby, Conn
- “Collaborative Medical Home-building 101: Harry Potter Learns Pratice Jazz” William Miller, Lehigh Valley Hospital, Bethlehem, Pa
- “Bringing the Joy Back Into Family Medicine: A TransforMED Practice’s Experience With the New Model of Family Medicine”Susan Nelson, Steele Ford, Kathy Steen, Harbor of Health, Memphis, Tenn
Stimulating presentations will span topics ranging from restructuring into teams for providing care, to programs to improve the health of the health care team members themselves, to the restructuring of the health care system in post-Katrina Louisiana around primary care and the medical home concept. We will also hear from New Orleans family physicians whose personal “stories of recovery” of practice serving their communities will be an inspiration to all. We will provide opportunity for conference attendees to contribute directly to the ongoing rebuilding efforts by organizing a volunteer community service activity during the Friday afternoon “free time,” as well as on Wednesday as an optional preconference service activity for those who desire to do so. (More details will be shared on both of these activities in the near future.)
To learn more about the 2008 Conference on Families and Health, and to register online, visit www.stfm.org/famhealthconf/fm08/index.htm. The conference Web site is now live. You can search sessions, view the conference schedule, make hotel reservations, and register online.
Conference brochures were mailed to all members the week of December 10. If you did not receive your conference brochure in the mail, download a copy at the link above or contact Margaret Henry at 800-274-2237, ext. 5415, mhenry@stfm.org to request a copy.
THE PATIENT-CENTERED MEDICAL HOME: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE STFM BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Are We Teaching the Concepts of the Patient-centered Medical Home to Our Learners?
As the centerpiece for his presidency year, John Rogers, MD, MSPH, MEd, has engaged the Board of Directors and STFM to advocate for and spread the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model to our practices, faculty, community practitioners, residents, and students. It is a concept congruent with the recommendations of the Future of Family Medicine (FFM) project, as well as the recommendations of national bodies, including the Institute of Medicine. In fact, numerous other educational entities, as well as national corporations, are joining together to promote this model, which has the capacity to address the varied challenges existent in our health care system.
As has been alluded to in other columns in this series, “Board Perspectives on the PCMH,” John has challenged members and committees of the Board to move forward to actualize his dreams. He has asked the Education Committee to conduct a study asking the question: “Are we teaching the concepts of the PCMH to our learners?” Our group will partner with the Research Committee to survey our residencies, as well as the academic and community-based practices where we train our medical students. The Competency-based Curriculum Workgroup of the FFM Special Task Force has already developed curricula on the tenets of the PCMH: advanced access, informatics, performance improvement, evidence-based medicine, groups visits, and the chronic care model.
The Education Committee’s challenge is to develop a set of questions that assess whether or not our teaching practices are teaching and modeling these PCMH components. What are the objective descriptors of teaching EBM? Do practices model performance improvement? Use informatics? Do they involve the learners in these practices, demonstrating the principles in action? A key converse question to be asked is: how can we help these teachers actually enact the principles of the PCMH? Often, they are just beginning to adopt these practices themselves. It is critical that we enable their positive modeling of these newer concepts, so that the students are encouraged and see the future in action.
If this project strikes your interest, and you would like to contribute to our process, please let us know. Being able to characterize the current situation in our teaching practices is a critical data set. It will enable us to measure the efficacy of our curricula and our implementation strategies.
Implications of Evidence on the Contributions of Primary Care to Medical Education
In classical Chinese writing, the word “crisis” is symbolized by “danger” plus “opportunity,” a situation that aptly describes the state of primary care in the United States—and the world—in the early 21st century. After 100 years of increasing specialism, with its orientation to management of specific diseases, consideration is being given to what is the challenge of primary care: dealing with illnesses that are representations of a multiplicity of interacting influences on health as represented by morbidity burdens, ie, constellations of illnesses in patients and populations. Resolving the tension between increasing specialization oriented toward specific diseases and specific causes (once germs, now genes) posed against a primary care imperative to deal with “morbidity burden” rather than disease is the next medical care challenge.
The strong and robust evidence1,2 for the public and personal benefits of health systems oriented toward primary care rather than specialty care must receive greater attention at international and national levels. Even in the United States, where resistance to primary care has been high on the part of vested professional and commercial interests, there are signs of a major reaction. For the first time, the three different branches of primary care (family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics) are combining forces in a strong effort to reverse the decline of primary care services by effectively advocating for a strong primary care infrastructure of the US health services systems. Buttressed by new (and still accumulating) evidence of the extent and impact of co- and multi-morbidity (better termed “morbidity burden”) and of the importance of the hallmarks of primary care (first contact plus person [not disease] focused care over time plus comprehensiveness of primary care services plus coordination of care when people appropriately need specialty services), the century-old tide may be turning.
Medical education—both undergraduate and graduate—has been responsible for the orientation of US medicine toward the production of specialists since the early 1900s. Even now, several of the most prestigious medical schools lack departments of primary care, and the financing of graduate medical education is strongly pro-specialist.3 Specialists will not easily cede their dominance over training and will resist change without strong theory and empirical evidence translated into policy by skillful political advocacy and an informed populace. At least six lines of approach—none of which calls for a return to the “good old days”—are worthy of consideration.
(1) A greater role for primary care services within health systems. Much now carried out in specialty care can be provided in primary care, thus avoiding the real possibility of harm from excessive care by specialists because of their training in settings with high probability of serious disease and therefore heightened suspicion of serious illness in people with self-limited symptoms and signs. Many health systems have far more comprehensive primary care services.4,5 Minor surgery done under local anesthesia is a routine primary care procedure in many places, as is use of ultrasonography for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Primary care trainees, especially at the postgraduate level, should be well trained in their skillful use.
(2) Federal support for postgraduate education in primary care, at least commensurate with that for specialist training, is of critical importance. In the presence of current incentives and without new incentives for primary care training, a continuing decline in attractiveness of primary care to both training programs and trainees will doom the US health services system to a demand-oriented set of technologic services available to those who can afford it. Societal support, at least partially in the form of federal financing, will also serve as a stimulus for rethinking the basis for graduate medical education in all specialties so that they are better suited to meeting population needs.
(3) The practice of primary care is in the community, not in the hospital or any other institutional setting. When training takes place in these institutions, trainees are exposed to distortions in the properties of diagnostic tests. In the community, where the incidence of serious illness is much lower than in these institutions, the predictive value of a positive test is much lower. Postgraduates trained in institutions learn to expect a greater yield from tests and thus have an exaggerated view of the utility and an inadequate view of the adverse events from testing in relatively healthy populations. Training in the community is uncommon throughout the world,5,(p. 173) and models of innovation and success will have to be devised.
(4) The now-recognized importance of continuous learning should be brought to bear in educational settings. The potential for self-evaluation in training settings is largely untapped; the common practice of assigning residents to follow their patients after hospital discharge is inadequate because patients who return for care are not representative of all treated patients and certainly not of all people who receive care. Mail, telephone, or computer follow-up of all patients at regular intervals (perhaps a week for acute illness or exacerbation, 1–3 months for non-acute illness) should be routine to determine the patient’s report of the status of the health problem, symptoms of possible adverse effects, and/or the emergence of new or recurrent problems. Even panels of patients in hospital outpatient settings are inadequate because these panels are rarely representative of communities. Systematic attention to outcomes of care in training will focus attention on the importance of health outcomes rather than on the proxy outcomes of disease-management programs and will set the stage for lifelong learning of the impact of medical practice on patients and populations rather than just on diseases.6
(5) To facilitate assessment of patient outcomes, generic (ie, not disease-specific) outcomes should be routine in the follow-up and reassessment of all patients. Moreover, the practice of using surrogate outcomes (process measures assumed to be surrogates for disease outcomes) has provided misleading results in the history of medical therapeutics) and should not be the sole or even the main evidence of good care in training programs.7 Instruments to assess overall morbidity burden (see, for example, www.acg.jhsph.edu) are now available to complement the armamentarium of health-related quality of life tools and proxy-outcome measures such as laboratory values. These same instruments, along with classification systems such as the ICPC,8 are also available to facilitate the recognition of problems as experienced by patients (in contrast to those as perceived by health professionals). Although a rate-limiting step in the processes of care (problem recognition, diagnostic process and outcome, therapeutic process and outcome, and reassessment for responsiveness), problem recognition is rarely if ever a subject of evaluation of quality or for guidelines development. Similarly, assessment to determine degree of resolution of problems is rarely if ever a criterion of quality of care or guideline development. If, indeed, the role of medical care is the resolution or amelioration of health problems, the exclusive focus on diagnostic testing and therapy as criteria for quality of care must be expanded, starting in medical education. Existing evidence that both practitioners and patients are more likely to report improvement when they agree on what the patient’s problem is9,10 provides strong support for the value of such a reorientation of quality assessment, starting in medical education.
(6) Training in the application of population-oriented techniques to understand the genesis of illness, response to interventions, and adverse effects from apparently appropriate (as well as inappropriate) interventions will be greatly facilitated by computerized health information systems in training programs as well as in practice. The United States has lagged in the adoption of this technology; an appropriate place to develop a concerted effort should be in primary care training sites. The dichotomy between primary care and public health is rapidly disappearing with the advent of organized health systems for defined populations. Primary care training is the best place to start a reorientation of medical practice that recognizes the importance of populations as well as patients.
(7) Although much is known about the functions and roles of primary care as a result of research over the most recent 20 years, little is known about the characteristics and roles of most specialty care. Specialist practice is largely immune from quality assessment, and criteria for referral to outpatient specialists (either from primary care or from self-referral) are poorly developed. An additional focus of reinvigorated primary care training should come to grips with the need for criteria for seeking care from specialists—either directly by patients or by referral from primary care. As many as 70% of specialist visits in the United States are for routine follow-up—an unjustifiable expenditure of resources. Routine follow-up should be returned to primary care for appropriate integration into overall patient care. Primary care training sites should take on the task of identifying when specialist consultation is desirable and for devising mechanisms for direct primary care-specialist interactions in the follow-up care of individual patients and population of patients. While on inpatient rotations, the primary care physician attending must be in control of and resolve the often-conflicting orders of multiple specialists who become involved in the care of patients; trainees will then learn the important primary care role of coordination of care.
The pending revolutions in medical care involve:
- the reality of interacting influences on health and illness
- the salience of multi-morbidity as a challenge in the provision of health services
- the representation of illness as morbidity burden, not as specific diseases
- the imminent potential of electronic information systems in the service of improving effectiveness, efficiency, and equity in health of populations.
All call for the addition of a population focus in medical and postgraduate training to complement the challenges of caring for individual patients. Family medicine is the appropriate venue, working with consumer and professional allies and using its own special technologies, in responding to these changing needs, imperatives, and opportunities.
References
1. Starfield B, Shi L, Macinko J. Contribution of primary care to health systems and health. Milbank Q 2005;83(3):457-502.
2. Starfield B, Shi L, Grover A, Macinko J. The effects of specialist supply on populations' health: assessing the evidence. Health Aff 2005;W5:97-107.
3. Bodenheimer T, Berenson RA, Rudolf P. The primary care-specialty income gap: why it matters. Ann Intern Med 2007;146(4):301-6.
4. Bindman AB, Forrest CB, Britt H, Crampton P, Majeed A. Diagnostic scope of and exposure to primary care physicians in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States: cross sectional analysis of results from three national surveys. BMJ 2007; 334(7606):1261-6.
5. Saltman RB, Rico A, Boerma WGW. Primary care in the driver's seat? Organizational reform in European primary care. Maidenhead, United Kingdom: Open University Press, 2006.
6. Batalden P, Davidoff F. Teaching quality improvement: the devil is in the details. JAMA 2007;298(9):1059-61.
7. Montori VM, Gandhi GY, Guyatt GH. Patient-important outcomes in diabetes—time for consensus. Lancet 2007;370(9593):1104-6.
8. Lamberts H, Wood M, Hofmans-Okkes I. The international classification of primary care in the European community. Oxford, United Kingdom/New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
9. Starfield B, Steinwachs D, Morris I, Bause G, Siebert S, Westin C. Patient-doctor agreement about problems needing follow-up visit. JAMA 1979;242(4):344-6.
10. Starfield B, Wray C, Hess K, Gross R, Birk PS, D'Lugoff BC. The influence of patient-practitioner agreement on outcome of care. Am J Public Health 1981;71(2):127-31.
Congress Wraps Up Appropriations
This fall and winter was a roller coaster on many legislative fronts. Both the SCHIP (children’s health insurance extension) and the annual appropriations bills were passed by Congress under veto threats from the President. In a significant game of chicken, President Bush vetoed these bills and Congress blinked. There were not enough Republicans willing to buck the president to override these vetoes.
The final Labor/HHS appropriations bill was finally passed and signed by the President on Christmas Eve. Whether one considers that an appropriate present depends on one’s point of view. Clearly there were winners that received a present of increased funding; others received coal in their stockings. Current funding levels under the bill were cut by $6.3 billion dollars. Attempting to meet the President’s budget level, Congress reduced funding to some programs and eliminated others. Legislators did keep in their “congressionally directed” spending—otherwise known as earmarks. After the final decisions were made about what programs were to stay, and at what levels, Congress implemented an across-the-board reduction of 1.75%. The purpose of this attempt at fiscal restraint was to spread the pain across programs to achieve the lower spending levels the President demanded.
Our Title VII primary care cluster remained at its current level in the final bill, so it was reduced only by the across-the-board cut, leaving the spending level at just under $48 million ($47.998), down from $48.8 million. Clearly we survived this round, but we are not moving forward in any positive way. Title VII as a whole received an increase of $10 million over 2007 levels, reaching $194 million.
Some other programs fared better than our cluster. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) received an increase over FY07 levels. The bill contained $334.5 million for AHRQ, an increase of $15.5 million above FY07. The NIH received an increase of $328.65 million while the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) received an increase of $77 million. One other program taking a hit in this year’s bill is the National Health Service Corps, losing $2.2 million from the previous year.
The good news in this is that the language to “fix” the HRSA NRSA fellowship problem was included in the final version of the bill. This means that guidance for the fellowship program applications for FY08 is now clear to be published by HRSA.
Moments in STFM History is gleaned from the collections of the Center for the History of Family Medicine. Housed at AAFP headquarters and administered by the AAFP Foundation, the Center serves as the principal resource center for the collection, conservation, exhibition, and study of materials relating to the history of family medicine in the United States. For more information on the Center, or if you have any questions, comments or suggestions for this feature, contact Center staff at 800-274-2237 (ext. 4420 or 4422) or chfm@aafp.org.
10 Years Ago
As 1998 began, STFM was making preparations for a 7-day trip to Ireland in June 1998. The trip was offered in conjunction with the 15th World Conference on WONCA, at which Robert Higgins, MD, was to be installed as WONCA president.
20 Years Ago
The 1988 Predoctoral Education Conference was held January 28–31 in Galveston, Tex. Major activities of the conference included 14 seminars, free university breakfasts, an evaluation breakfast, and a dinner theater presentation, “Willie: A Dream,” based on the life and work of famed physician Sir William Osler.
30 Years Ago
The January 1978 Family Medicine Times noted that the STFM Board had approved a $234,000 budget for 1978, which represented an 8.8% increase over 1977. Factors in the increase included a format change for Family Medicine Times, a change in the spring conference fee schedule (to allow for half-price registration for new members joining STFM from January 1 to April 15), and the obtaining of outside financial support for STFM activities.
40 Years Ago
As 1968 opened, STFM was preparing for a meeting in Chicago on February 9, 1968. Dues of $5 per person for 1968 had been set. Membership was dependent on receipt of dues and a copy of the member’s curriculum vitae.
Pix From the Past
Leland Blanchard, MD, speaking at the 1973 Annual Business Meeting in Chicago
Macaran Baird, MD, MS, gives a workshop presentation, “Working With Families in Office Practice,” as part of the STFM “Working With Families” conference March 5–8, 1983, in Kansas City, Mo.
Plan Ahead to Attend the 2008 STFM Annual Spring Conference
The theme of the 2008 Annual Spring Conference is "Strengthen the Core, Stimulate Progress: Assembling Patient-centered Medical Homes." The Annual Spring Conference will be held April 30–May 4, 2008, in Baltimore.
The STFM Program Committee has developed a program that is sure to motivate you to new levels of achievement as we strive to “Strengthen Core and Stimulate Progress: Assembling Patient-centered Medical Homes.” The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) has gained prominence and momentum this past year as a solution for a health system that is recognized as unsustainable in its current form. The PCMH is being advanced by physician and patient organizations, community health systems, health care corporations, health insurance companies, and many business groups, who all support federal legislation to make the PCMH part of the law of the land. Our ship is coming in, we just need to be ready!
Presentations in the following areas will provide us with the knowledge and skills that will allow us to fulfill the dream of the PCMH and thrive in a changed health care system:
Transmitting family medicine’s core values to students, residents, and patients
Equipping faculty, residents, and preceptors to manage relationships, information, and processes
Training students, residents, and faculty to achieve characteristics of the PCMH: patient-centered care, whole-person orientation, team approach, elimination of barriers to access, information systems, focus on quality, and core services.
Redesigning our departments’ and programs’ medical practices to achieve characteristics of the Patient-Centered Medical Home.
Plenary presentations include:
- Improving Access to High-quality, Affordable Care—How To Eliminate Medical Homelessness” Richard C. Wender, MD, Thomas Jefferson University
- The Challenge of Practice Variations and the Future of Primary Care” John E. Wennberg, MD, MPH, The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice
- Something You Somehow Haven’t to Deserve: A Medical Home For Every American” John Saultz, MD, Oregon Health and Science University
- Managing Change to Foster Creative Innovation” Barbara Johnson, PhD, TransforMED, Leawood, Kan
As you step back from the pace of your daily work, take this opportunity to reflect on your accomplishments of the past year and reenergize yourself for the coming year by attending the conference presentations and taking advantage of the environment of the Baltimore Inner Harbor. You are steps from Inner Harbor restaurants and shopping, the National Aquarium, Maryland Science Center and USS Constellation, and Baltimore Orioles baseball at Camden Yards, so enjoy our host city.
The conference brochure will be mailed to all STFM members in late January; however, members can click here for presentations, register online, and make their hotel reservations.
Do You Have an Open Position to Fill? Consider STFM’s Positions and Opportunities Book
STFM will publish its annual Positions and Opportunities Book for distribution with conference materials at the Annual Spring Conference April 30–May 4, 2008, in Baltimore. This publication will be a valuable, organized reference to current opportunities in family medicine education.
Programs and institutions with positions available should submit copy to Family Medicine Classifieds, c/o Russell Johns Associates, PO Box 1510, Clearwater, FL 33757-1510. E-mail: familymedicine@medical-admart.com. 800-237-7027. Fax: 727-445-9380. When you send in your ad, be sure to note that the ad is being submitted for the STFM Positions and Opportunities Book.
Increase your ad exposure and take advantage of our special combination pricing. For more information on placing your ad, contact Susan Deakins, Russell Johns Associates, at 800-237-7027. Overnight delivery: 1001 S. Myrtle Avenue, Suite 7, Clearwater, FL 33756-3930.
Click here to see full pricing information for the Spring 2008 Positions and Opportunities Book.
Conference on Practice Improvement Call for Submissions
Submissions can now be entered online for the Conference on Practice Improvement, to be held December 4–7, 2008, in Savannah, Ga. The conference theme is “Blueprint for the Medical Home.”
The submission deadline is March 10, 2008. The direct Web URL is http://www.stfm.org/stfmpresenter/submission/start.cfm?confid=152.
Forum for Behavioral Science in Family Medicine Call for Submissions
Online submissions are requested for the Forum for Behavioral Science in Family Medicine, to be held September 25–28, 2008, in Chicago. The theme for 2008 is “Integrating and Expanding Behavioral Science in the New Medical Home.”
We invite proposals that will show how behavioral science concepts and skills are essential to building the medical home and proposals that expand the role of the behavioral sciences and behavioral scientists in the medical home.
To submit, go to http://www.stfm.org/stfmpresenter/submission/start.cfm?confid=153. Submission deadline is March 21, 2008.
Predoctoral Directors Development Institute—January 24, 2008, prior to the 2008 Predoctoral Education Conference in Portland
Predoctoral Directors Development Institute—April 30, 2008, prior to the 2008 Annual Spring Conference in Baltimore
Predoctoral Education Conference—January 24–27, 2008, Portland
Conference on Families and Health—February 27–March 1, 2008, New Orleans
Annual Spring Conference—April 30–May 4, 2008, Baltimore
Forum for Behavioral Science in Family Medicine—September 24-28, 2008, Chicago
Smiles for Life Feedback
The STFM Group on Oral Health is seeking feedback on Smiles for Life: A National Oral Health Curriculum for Family Medicine as it prepares to begin work on a second edition. If you have used any of the Smiles for Life materials in any way, the group would greatly value your input. In particular, they would like your thoughts on what elements were most useful to you, how you used them, and what suggestions you have for future improvements. The more specific you can be the better! Please e-mail the editor and group cochair, Alan Douglass, MD, directly at adouglass@midhosp.org.
Kudos
Jacob Reider, MD, of Misys Healthcare Systems in Raleigh, NC, was included in the prestigious Best Doctors in America database, the biennial list of the top 5% of doctors in the United States. The database listing is produced every 2 years based on nominations and voting from 40,000 US physicians, representing 43 specialties and 40 subspecialties.
New Members
| California | New York |
| Monica Tantraphol, MD | Beena Jani, MD |
| Illinois | Ohio |
| Joseph Guidi, DO | Justin Catlett, MD |
| Kelvin Wynn, MD | Kelly Fleming, MD |
| Sheng Liu, MD | |
| Indiana | |
| Melody Drake, MD | Oregon |
| Melanie Schreiner, MD | Cliff Coleman, MD |
| Deirdre Donovan, MD | |
| Kansas | Tim Joslin, MD |
| Stephanie Thompson, MPH | |
| Pennsylvania | |
| Maine | Mark Kauffman, DO |
| Alane O'Connor, MS | Mary Rose O'Connor |
| Sara Roberts, PA-C | |
| Texas | |
| Massachusetts | Rolf Montalvo, MD |
| Michelle O'Brien | |
| Utah | |
| Michigan | Richard Backman, MD |
| Kevin Deighton, MD | |
| Joseph Giannola, MD | Virginia |
| Erika Giordanodo, DO | Agatha Parks-Savage, EdD, LPC, RN |
| Mississippi | Washington |
| Kathryn Taylor | Susan Opar, MD |
| Montana | Wisconsin |
| Joseph Keel, MD | Charles Staubs, DO |
| New Jersey | |
| J. Anna Looney, PhD |
Annual Giving Campaign
Happy New Year! I can offer this greeting, even though this column is being written on December 17. After all, we do know that January 1 will arrive on schedule.
It’s too early for me to be able to make an annual giving campaign year-end report and too late to make a final solicitation for that 2007 tax-deductible contribution. However, we’re always willing to receive donations, so feel free to continue to give!
This is the season of giving, so I thought you might like to know how the generosity of our donors has benefited our members over the past several years. We have selected 86 New Faculty Scholars, 40 Faculty Enhancement Awardees, 15 Bishop Fellows, and 14 International Scholars. The total amount of annual giving campaign funds awarded to these STFM members is $435,000. Since we now know through research that giving stimulates that pleasure center in the brain, our donors should be happy that they have enabled so many of their fellow STFM members to participate in STFM’s professional development programs.
STFM has received seven proposals for funding from the new Group Project Fund, with the awards to be made on February 1, 2008. You can be a part of STFM’s history by helping support these projects in the inaugural year of the Fund. I guarantee that once the results of these projects are presented, you will have a smile on your face knowing you had a role in each project’s success.
The Foundation Trustees are looking forward to an exciting year in 2008, working more closely with the STFM Board to address the funding needs identified by STFM members. We all appreciate your commitment to help us in this endeavor.