STFM President Joseph Gravel, MD, illustrates how he has staved off burnout by building a career around the life-giving practices of advocacy, service, and gratitude. Dr Gravel gives us a sneak peek into the strategic plan which will guide STFM in the coming years, centered around topics such as artificial intelligence (AI). He also lets us know about his dislike of the “P-Word” (“provider”) and why the labels used for family medicine professionals are so important to maintaining that professionalism which gives agency and appropriate voice to those giving relationship-based care in an era of corporatized medicine.

Resources

• STFM Advocacy Course

• Professionalism in an Era of Corporate Medicine: Addressing Microlapses and Promoting Microacts as a New Model - Fam Med

•  Empowerment and the P-Word - Fam Med

• Get to Know Incoming STFM President Joseph Gravel, MD - STFM Blog

Joseph W. Gravel, Jr, MD, FAAFP

Dr Gravel is professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. During his 5-plus years as chair at Medical College of Wisconsin, his department has created three new family medicine residency programs in Milwaukee (2) and Green Bay. He is a graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and the Virginia Commonwealth University Fairfax Family Practice Center Family Medicine Residency. Dr Gravel served as a residency program director for more than 20 years; he was founding residency program director of the Tufts University Family Medicine Residency in Malden, MA and was chief medical officer and residency program director at the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center, a Teaching Health Center FQHC in Lawrence, MA. He previously held teaching appointments at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Worcester) and Tufts University School of Medicine (Boston).

Dr Gravel is currently President of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (2024–25). He also serves on the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians’ Board of Directors and as the senior Wisconsin delegate to the AAFP Congress of Delegates. He is a technical advisor for the HRSA THCGME program. He is a past president of the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors (AFMRD), the Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC), and the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians.

He has also served on the ABFM Board of Directors, the ACGME Review Committee for Family Medicine, the ADFM Finance Committee, the STFM Foundation Board of Trustees, and as chair of the Academic Family Medicine Advocacy Committee.

His department created Wisconsin’s first HRSA-funded Teaching Health Center in 2023. His residency programs participated in three national residency innovation initiatives: the P4 National Demonstration Project, HRSA Teaching Health Center program (one of the original 11), and ACGME Length of Training (LoT) Pilot. He was selected by Governor Deval Patrick to serve as a Commissioner on the Massachusetts Special Commission on Graduate Medical Education, has been deeply involved in national and statewide primary care workforce issues, and received the 2013 STFM Advocate Award.