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President's Desk: Jason Marker, MD, FAAFP

Thanks for checking in one more time for my final blog post of the year. It's been a great year for the Foundation and I think it sets us up well for exciting things in 2016. I've taken some time to review my prior posts and am continually amazed by the work that our excellent Board of Trustees has done and the commitment that our staff members have made to executing the vision of the Board with precision. Many thanks to them all.

Our Board meeting this last November tackled some big issues for us. If I had to sum up the meeting in a word it would be "governance". I have worked hard during my time with the Board (7 years!!) to do what I could to help us gain a more solid foundation. We have restructured as an organization, adjusted terms of service, rebuilt our officer track, and created opportunities for enhanced skill set diversity at the Board table.  

This last Board meeting we tackled the matter of racial and ethnic diversity in our discussions about our new board members. We officially launched our Diversity Work Group which, led by President-Elect Dr. Hughes Melton, will spend 2016 working on the necessary internal changes to integrate a focus on diversity into our organizational DNA. We also made needed changes to the governance of our research area that will lay the groundwork for the future success of the Research Signature Program being led by new President Dr. Evelyn Lewis&Clark.

Dr. Douglas Spotts from Pennsylvania was elected as our new Treasurer and will be a powerful addition to our officer track as Dr. Brent Smith moves on from Treasurer to Vice President. Our new Trustees elected for 3 year terms are:

Corporate Trustee: Carrie Johnson with CompHealth
Chapter Trustee: Dr. Gretchen Dickson
At-Large Trustee: Dr. David Govaker

I'd like to offer here a special thank you to our outgoing Board member, Mr. Stephen Gray Wallace, whose service to the Board was much appreciated!

Finally, I'd like to thank you, our faithful blog followers, for your ongoing support of the work of the AAFP Foundation. I have had an excellent time on the Foundation Board of Trustees. I have learned a lot, always felt supported and appreciated, and been blessed with opportunities I could never have had otherwise. It's been a great run and I will miss the Board, staff and the work that we have done together. My year ahead is an unknown, but I'm sure that I will find things to keep me busy. I will continue to be involved with the FMAHealth leadership team as well as activities in my own state Chapter. I also think I'll find ways to stay in touch with my friends at the Foundation - I'm "just a donor" now and that may be my greatest asset to the organization. If I'm lucky, I'll get asked to keep teaching in the Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute (wink, wink)!

Thanks for staying in touch in 2015 and plan to join us in 2016 for future installments of the AAFP Foundation Blog.

President's Desk: Jason Marker, MD, FAAFP

For me and my family in Indiana, the start of high school marching band season usually denotes the start of autumn, but with a late-September warm snap and plenty of green in the leaves still, it felt like summer as I headed off to Denver for the AAFP Congress of Delegates and the Family Medicine Experience (FMX). As I lay-over on my return trip in the Detroit airport I see that I am returning to autumn - 50 degrees, wind, a light rain, and somehow while I was away, trees in harvest shades. This year's annual "meeting of the minds" for our specialty has ushered in fall.

 How fitting, then, that our meeting in Denver marks the turning point in the cycle of the Foundation from summer planning and committee work to preparations for our fall Board meeting and start of a new year of Foundation leadership. I will use this blog to touch on a few key areas of interest: Signature Programs, Board diversity, and our status within the "family of Family Medicine."

SIGNATURE PROGRAMS
Our Humanitarian Signature Program, Family Medicine Cares, is flourishing. We continue to see momentum for the Foundation to support new and pre-existing free clinics and lots of student and resident interest in participating in these programs. Our projects in Haiti are overflowing with interest in all three sectors of patient care, humanitarian support, and medical education, and we are expanding in a more robust longitudinal faculty development project using both face-to-face and distance learning approaches. Dr. Don Briscoe, a residency program director in Houston is helping guide this process as a consultant to our planning team.

Family Medicine Leads (FML) - both the National Conference scholarship program and the FML Emerging Leader Institute - has created considerable buzz among the leadership of the Academy and among the students and residents themselves as they are already expressing interest in next year - 10 months away! Click here to watch our video highlighting the inaugural FML Emerging Leader Institute.

Dr. Evelyn Lewis&Clark is leading the charge in developing our Research Signature Program and has had a series of meetings through the summer to solidify the direction we will go. As we seek out Board of Trustee candidates for the coming year, those with research skills and interest will be highly sought out by our Board as this Signature Program may be the hardest one to develop of the three.

The Annual Donor Recognition Dinner was a great event celebrating these programs. Enjoy these photos from our evening at the Seawell Grand Ballroom at the Denver Performing Arts Center. 

DIVERSITY
The Board of Trustees has entirely re-envisioned what "board diversity" means following our excellent diversity education sessions at the spring board meeting. Our Diversity Enhancement Work Group has worked over the summer to prepare for changes we can make to affect this fall's selection process for 2016 Trustees and to set an agenda of work for 2016. We have reached out to our friends in the AAFP's NCCL (National Conference of Constituency Leaders) groups as well as other national organizations like the National Hispanic Medical Association to seek out the best and the brightest of diverse backgrounds AND strong Family Medicine skill sets.

During my address as Foundation President to the AAFP Congress of Delegates, I signaled our desire to enhance the diversity of our Board and we were immediately rewarded with several interested members seeking application materials. How the Foundation manages its diversity in the next couple of years promises to be the biggest game-changer we'll see for our donor pool and our programming effectiveness. Stay tuned. If you, or someone you know, can bring diversity to our board (racial and ethnic diversity, but also diversity from other underrepresented groups AND with diverse backgrounds in our three mission-driven areas of humanitarian work, education, and research) please reach out to Phyllis Naragon or Brenda Cherpitel to find out more.

THE FAMILY OF FAMILY MEDICINE
It has been my observation that historically, the Foundation has felt a little bit like it sat at the "kiddie table" during the Thanksgiving feast of the various family medicine organizations. As I approach the completion of my term as Foundation President, I have seen quite a change in our culture in this area. Our programming has expanded in depth and quality as we have focused on the development of our signature programs. Since the addition of Public Trustees (trustees from outside of the formal "house of medicine") our worldview has expanded and we've incorporated concepts from other industries. We are finding more and more interest in our activities from the leadership of other family medicine organizations and are feeling emboldened to take a look at other primary care organizations from whom we can partner for stronger mutual support. Finally, the Foundation has positioned its own leaders well within the organizational structure of FMAHealth - keeping our philanthropic principles well-attended to in their strategic planning processes.

Can it be long before a physician who has STARTED their leadership involvement in the Foundation is leveraging that experience for greater leadership on the Academy side of the equation? Which of the organizations in the family of family medicine couldn't be stronger with the leadership of those individuals whose organizational upbringing started with the Foundation? I see the day coming when the AAFP President will proudly be a Past President of our AAFP Foundation instead of the other way around.

Our VIP event at FMX sold out this year. It was a who's who of our donors including an ever-increasing number of family medicine leaders who are seeing our event as the "must-attend" event to finish off their week of meetings. Enjoy these photos from our evening of fine dining and enjoyment in the Boettcher Concert Hall with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.


This last week in Denver has been a marvelous opportunity to network with our Foundation officers, staff, corporate partners, and trustees. Our Foundation truly is rising in strength, wisdom, and capacity to achieve the goals of our mission statement. I hope that each of you examines your own relationship with the Foundation and commits to strengthening that relationship in the coming years. Good things lie ahead and we want you to be a part of it! 

President's Desk: Jason Marker, MD, FAAFP

Thanks for coming back to catch up with our Board of Trustees activities. Our Officers and staff are always thinking about the needs of our organization to help us see the road ahead clearly while improving our efficiency and effectiveness at serving the needs of our donors. Ever mindful of our mission statement, we strive to do that work with a high level of resource stewardship and progressive thinking. We started our Board meeting with an afternoon of Diversity Enhancement Education. We decided last fall that it was time for a deep dive into this topic for the good of our Board and over the winter put out a Request For Proposals looking for just the right speaker. Susan B. Wilson, PhD, MBA, the Vice Chancellor of Diversity and Inclusion for the University of Missouri Kansas City was selected in that process. She tasked us with some pre-work and engaged us in a very productive session designed to help us understand the state of research into the important outcomes gained from having a high level of board diversity (as defined in terms of both inherent and acquired diversity). We discussed unconscious bias and worked through case studies to highlight important points for Boards to consider as they develop processes to obtain and maintain diversity of leadership. This was quite simply the best and most appropriate diversity training I've ever received and it led, by the end of the weekend, to a work force with short-term (i.e. immediate) and long-term goals including evaluation of our new Trustee application process and ways for individual Board members to enlarge their professional networks in ways that are important personally and for the Board.


Friday evening many of us enjoyed a 12-1 victory for the Kansas City Royals as you may have seen on Facebook...

 Find us on Facebook @AAFPFoundation

Saturday was a long work day as we spent 11 hours in committee meetings discussing everything from donor development to our work in Haiti and from the beginning of our Research Signature Program to our audited financials.

Sunday was the official AAFP Foundation Board meeting. We approved our award winners (grants, Outstanding Program Award, Center for the History of Family Medicine Fellowship, Philanthropist of the Year, and much more!), got everyone up to speed on this summer's launch of Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute, and made summer plans to evaluate the governance of our entire research arm.

Our Foundation has grown in sophistication, governance maturity, and expertise of membership in the last 6 years. This Board meeting was proof of that. Never before have we had so many irons in the fire for the good of Family Medicine and in support of our AAFP. That said, we see opportunities at every turn to grow into new areas and with that growth will come the need to be always reevaluating how we do our work. Our current officers (Dr. Evelyn Lewis&Clark, President-elect; Dr. S. Hughes Melton, Vice President; Dr. P. Brent Smith, Treasurer) are as committed to the long-term growth and success of the Foundation as I am and that bodes well for the future - and will generate a lot of work getting us there. Our capable staff proved to us (again) this weekend that they, too, are up to the task of creating ever bigger success stories for our donors.

Finally, we wished well our departing Board members who have served us faithfully in recent years. Christopher Watson, our Student member was graduating from Medical School this weekend (congrats, Chris...or should I say, Dr. Watson!) and couldn't join us, but below are photos of outgoing Board members Dr. Jessica Johnson (our Resident Trustee) and Dr. Lloyd VanWinkle (one of our liaisons from the AAFP Board of Trustees).This is a great Board doing phenomenal work with exceptional promise for the future. If you or someone you know is interested in considering a seat at our table, please contact Brenda Cherpitel. If you've read between lines of this blog you'll know that we are specifically interested in expanding the diversity of our Board. Please consider identifying one of the leaders in your community who may represent a diverse or traditionally underserved population and nominate them for leadership. We are ALL better served when our Board represents ALL of those we wish to serve.