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.

President's Desk: Jason Marker, MD, FAAFP

Heart to Heart International (HHI) recently held its inaugural Compassion Gala and selected the AAFP Foundation to receive its first "Heart for Humanity" award. During a very special evening, the Foundation was recognized before a sold-out crowd in Kansas City complete with a video featuring Dr. Dan and Ruth Ostergaard and Craig Doane as well as the leadership of HHI talking about the importance of this partnership.

The AAFP Foundation received this award because of our continued humanitarian efforts with HHI through Family Medicine Cares International and our disaster relief efforts.  

Family Medicine Cares International delivers patient care and provides medical education and resources for people in need around the world. Currently focused in Haiti, the program also works to improve the lives and health of children by providing essential personal, medical, and educational items to schools in this impoverished country.  Make sure to keep reading for more info.  Please consider helping to continue the good work of your AAFP Foundation in Haiti.

Disaster Relief is critical in times of crisis like the recent natural disaster in Nepal.  As people struggle to make their way out of such a devastating tragedy we are able to be part of the solution through our in-country partners like HHI and International Medical Corps.  Please consider being part of this effort with us and making a donation for disaster relief.

Below is a reprint of my acceptance remarks during the Compassion Gala:
 

Thank you!

The American Academy of Family Physicians represents over 120,000 family physicians, family medicine residents, and medical students. Each of these servant leaders has a heart for humanity and they live out that mission every day through the intimacy of the doctor-patient relationship - creating better health one patient visit at a time.

Family physicians know that the power of one encounter is the power to change a whole community, which can in turn change a whole state and ultimately improve the health of our whole nation.

The AAFP Foundation is whole-heartedly behind that domestic agenda and supports the development of free medical clinics in every state, creates opportunities for high-quality family medicine research and funds a myriad of student and resident programs.

Early in the history of the Foundation, however, we saw a need to help fulfill a deep yearning that many family physicians feel to reach outside our borders and to give from our abundance to help support those less endowed with medical resources than ourselves. Projects on that scale, when done well, require the right partnerships. Heart to Heart has been that long-term partner who, as Ms. Moritz stated a moment ago, has helped us make the impossible, possible.

Heart to Heart's model of sustainable support and your respect for the value of the existing local healthcare resources mirrors our own beliefs about medical missions. Additionally, the flexibility you've shown as we've tried to enlarge your vision of how the specialty of family medicine can impact another country's health delivery system is to be applauded.

Though some may still only know Heart to Heart as a rapid response disaster relief organization, the AAFP Foundation has been blessed to watch you develop a rich organizational understanding of the value of long-term relationships - relationships that are built one patient visit at a time. Relationships that can change whole nations of people. Relationships, and professional partnerships, that can improve the health of the world.

On behalf of the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, the leaders and membership of the AAFP, Mr. Craig Doane our Executive Director, and our professional and capable support team led by Brenda Cherpitel and Erin Heffernan, I offer our sincere and humble "thank you" for this recognition of our work - a work we would not have wanted to do without you.

May God bless you and may God bless His work that our organizations will do together in the future.

Thank you again.

As if that didn't make for an exciting enough weekend, I was able to arrive in Kansas City with my wife in time to address the AAFP staff at the "Walk for the Children of Haiti" event. This annual fundraiser, done in conjunction with AAFP Wellness Committee activities, raised over $6,800 for our children's projects in Haiti! It is through donations like this that we were able to have the following achieved:

• Provided a much needed water pump for one of the schools so the children can access safe drinking water during school hours.
• Constructed a security fence around a primary school that helps keep the children safe.
• Painted walls and tiled floors at several schools.

Please consider helping us continue this work! 

I will depart for Kansas City on Thursday this week (my 3rd week in a row!) for our Foundation Board of Trustees meeting. I just bet I'll have some more exciting things to post on this site by the time that's over. Stay tuned!!

Jason

President's Desk: Jason Marker, MD, FAAFP

Thanks for checking out our latest blog post!  If you arrived here from the President’s Update email, thanks for that last click that led you here.  If you arrived by another means, we’re glad you’re here to get an update on the AAFP Foundation’s activities and encourage you to check us out on: website, Twitter, and Facebook.

What a winter!  While many philanthropic organizations are hibernating for the winter after the flurry of year-end activities that are typical of fundraising organizations, the Foundation revs into high-gear in January and February.

Mid-January is the so-called “Working Party” meeting.  This year held in Phoenix, it is a meeting of the 8 organizations that make up the “family” of Family Medicine. This year we had a very productive AAFP Foundation Officer’s Strategy Session to make sure we were all on the same page and working toward a clear common goal. We also participated in the broader conversation about the direction of Family Medicine as a specialty to make sure all of the organizations have a shared vision and are avoiding duplication of work.

At the end of the month was the annual Corporate Roundtable meeting.  Held in Clearwater, FL it brings together top leaders of the Foundation, AAFP and our many corporate partners from the medical industry for a 2-day exchange of ideas designed to keep us fresh with the latest updates in our respective areas.  This exchange allows us to work toward common goals.  It was a powerful two days that will help drive decisions for all the attendees in the future.  We truly appreciate our corporate partners  and continue to say thank you the past support.  For any corporate partners reading this, if you have additional feedback about anything you find on our website that you want more information about, please reach out to us.  We want your voice to be heard.

Family Medicine Cares has been a Signature Program of the Foundation for several years.  FMC USA is a grant program supporting free medical clinics around the country.  We treat every grant like it’s the first one we’ve done and we are so proud of the work being done by family docs around America.  In early February, Foundation Treasurer, Dr. Brent Smith visited our latest clinic in Meridian, Mississippi. 

The new organization Family Medicine for America’s Health is up and rolling.  A $22 million promise to America that we are committed to as a specialty.  I have the pleasure of serving with this group.  In fact, AAFP Foundation Past-President Dr. Jane Weida is on the Board of Directors.  As part of this initiative there is a national communications strategy which includes a unified strategic plan with specific action steps for revolutionizing the delivery of health care in the U.S. 

  

Finally, a word about Haiti.  At the end of February I was supposed to be giving a lecture to Haitian medical students about the value of primary care, but I wasn't there.  Why not?  Due to political unrest in Haiti, there has been an escalation of violence, demonstrations, road blockades and kidnappings in and around Port au Prince (our home base and leaping off point or everything we do in Haiti).  In high-level meetings between the Foundation staff leadership and the leadership of our in-country partner Heart to Heart International it was determined that our safety while in Haiti at that time could not be assured to everyone’s satisfaction.  The trip is currently postponed as we follow the events on the ground.  We are already making plans to reschedule when and if we can .  We are also considering our options for our ongoing faculty development commitment to their Family Medicine residency training programs.  We remain hopeful this will be a temporary pause in our work and that we can get back to it as soon as possible.  Thanks to all of you for your ongoing commitment to our Family Medicine Cares International initiative in Haiti.

Well, I think that’s all for now.  I will talk more in my next edition about plans for our Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute in the summer, about our upcoming Board meeting in May, and about ongoing changes in the field of Family Medicine.  I’m SURE the next blog post I write will happen without snow on the ground…I hope. 

Jason Marker, MD, MPA, FAAFP

President, AAFP Foundation

From the Desk of Brent Smith, MD:

It was my honor to award the 14^th Family Medicine Cares USA Grant to the Free Clinic of Meridian, located in Meridian, MS.  The Free Clinic of Meridian opened in November 2014, and is an example of a community engagement overcoming multiple obstacles.  It was a great experience getting to drive over and spend a few hours meeting some wonderful people and formally awarding them a much-deserved grant. 

We had a quick tour of the facility prior to the presentation.  You enter into the clinic into a fairly spacious waiting room.  They have four exam rooms, a conference room where patient education classes (e.g. diabetes, nutrition/diet and smoking cessation) and/or consultation takes place; in-take/out-take areas, and a nursing station. 

Lee Valentine, MD is the AAFP member who served as the applicant for the grant and is a board member and provider for the clinic.  Dr. Valentine is a family physician with over three decades of experience practicing in rural Mississippi, who just recently helped found a DO residency in Meridian (only the 4th Family Medicine residency in the state, and the 3^rd rural program.)  Interestingly, Dr. Valentine worked with two competing local hospitals to develop backing for the residency program, and that cooperation extends to the free clinic, which has financial backing and support from both the Rush Foundation Hospital and the Anderson Regional Medical Center.  In fact, the Free Clinic of Meridian is located in a building that is leased from one of the hospitals for $1 a year, and that hospital continues to pay the utilities.  Further, both hospitals have donated equipment and ancillary services to support the clinic. 

At the award ceremony, we also enjoyed meeting several board members, two of which deserve special recognition.  The Board President Brenda Hiatt and Vice-President Cathy Williamson are community members who have been instrumental in rallying the community behind the clinic.  The staff and providers for the clinic are all volunteers. Residents of the Meridian program area are already serving in the clinic, and medical students and nurse practitioner students are beginning to spend time there while rotating at the local hospitals.  The clinic provides primary care services, mental health counseling and assistance with engaging community social services. 

The grant is in the amount of $17,805 and is being used for much needed upgrades to donated equipment such as some very outdated exam tables.  It will also purchase a phlebotomy chair, which was described as “one of those things we never knew we would need until we got started.”   The clinic already has a waiting list of 3-4 months for new patients as a result of the high demand in the area.  Currently 300 patients are registered.  They are working to add new providers and volunteers to increase their hours of operation, which are currently 16-20 hours a week.

A news report of the Foundation’s visit can be found on WTOK- Channel 11 Meridian News Center website.  

President's Desk: Jason Marker, MD, FAAFP

Welcome to my first blog post as your 2015 President of the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation! Some of you just got here from a link in an email about a “President’s Update” – thanks for following that link. Others of you found your way here on your own. Either way, I am pleased to share some brief information about what I see shaping up for 2015.

First off, social media. Here is the information you need about accessing our Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Please “like us” and follow these sites as they will be updated regularly (but I promise not obsessively) throughout the year with information about the Foundation and my activities on its behalf. We have accounts with Instagram and others (even a Foundation Pintrest account!) but I’m over-the-hill technologically speaking (I’m turning 44 this year!) and better stick to the basics. Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Picasa

For longer exchanges of information, I’ll be using this blog, though we’ll let you know about new posts with a link from an email. If you want to be added to this email list let us know.

As we start the year I want to lay out in broad brush strokes what I think will be the highlights of 2015. There are several, so here they are in tabular form:

• Corporate Roundtable event has been specifically redesigned with corporate feedback in mind to better achieve the goals of information-sharing with these critical partners.
• Our third Family Medicine Cares International trip to Haiti in February (February 21-28) is packed with attendees and will build on past work of community service, patient care, and educational support for that country’s four medical schools and two family medicine residencies.
• We will be launching our super-awesome, action-packed, all-new, this-ain’t-your-grandfather’s, Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute in the summer. This conference wants to be an innovative two-day leadership skills event, immersing hand-picked medical students and Family Medicine residents in a high-end experience-based opportunity to create new leaders for our specialty. Family Medicine needs more than just a broader pipeline of new physicians, we need a more expansive “leadership pipeline” of creative thinkers - Emerging Leaders who aren’t just thinking outside the box, but who think in ways that ignore that a box ever existed.
• The Foundation will have a robust presence at the first redesigned AAFP annual event, now called the Family Medicine Experience (FMX). This September 29 - October 3 in Denver launches FMX and the Foundation will be found worthy of a place at the table of this new model of “annual meeting”. I’ll hope to see you there.
• The AAFP Foundation will continue its strong leadership within Family Medicine for America’s Health (FMAH) – a strategic plan and communications program for our specialty. AAFP Foundation representatives can be found at all levels of this new entity whose aim is to “re-present” Family Medicine to America as the “must-have” vehicle for better health and as the only possible solution to the ills of the US Healthcare system. I’ll make sure you hear lots more about this as the year progresses.

Well, that’s probably enough for now. My goal is to keep you up-to-date with information about our Foundation and to hope that a tiny bit of my excitement about our future as a specialty rubs off on you. Don’t forget to connect with us on your favorite social media platform! Blessings for a meaningful new year…

Jason Marker, MD, MPA, FAAFP
AAFP President
Private Practice Physician, Wyatt, IN

It all begins with a foundation – A home. A school. An office. Even Family Medicine.

You can’t build any of these structures without first building a foundation, just like Family Medicine can’t stand on its own without strong support.

The AAFP Annual Fund is the foundation of Family Medicine. With your donation, the Foundation can provide more than 20 humanitarian, scientific, and educational initiatives with the support they need to stand firm.  

For example, the AAFP Foundation’s humanitarian program Family Medicine Cares USA supports the start-up efforts of new free health clinics around the United States through grants and volunteer efforts. Since the program began in April 2011, more than $70,000 has been provided to help open doors for four new clinics. Family Medicine Cares International delivers patient care and provides medical resources for underserved populations in need around the world, with initial focus on Haiti.

Your donations have also helped us build a foundation for research. During the past 18 months, the Foundation has funded more than $306,000 in support of research efforts with the Joint Grant Awards Program (JGAP) and Research Stimulation and Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) Stimulation Grants.

The Foundation was able to provide more scholarships to medical students and residents last year than ever before to attend the AAFP National Conference of Family Medicine Resident and Medical Students. Because of your increasing support, we’re building a foundation for the Future of Family Medicine one scholarship at a time.

Nothing can exist without a foundation. Let’s continue to build one for Family Medicine. Make a contribution to the Annual Fund.

2013 Family Medicine Cares International Patient Care Team

(L to R) Drs. Julie Anderson, Kim Tjaden, and Denis Chagnon

(L to R) Drs. Michelle Jones, Ainee Ahmed, Dave Smith and Jacobo Rivero

The Patient Care Team took a few moments one morning to take a few quick photos before the group divided up to head out for the day.  Dr. David Smith reflected on his recent experience in Haiti, "My lasting recollection of the February 2013 FMCI delegation trip to Haiti will be that of two groups of people; the people of Haiti who we came to serve, and that of my fellow Patient Care Team members with whom I shared the entire experience."

Dr. Chagnon as the patient..

Dr. Chagnon took some time with the little boy in this photo after having diagnosed his mother with a previously unknown heart murmur and arranged for a cardiology evaluation.  Because of Dr. Chagnon's evaluation the mother was able to avoid hospitalization or worse.

When asked about his experience in Haiti he said it, "truly felt like I was making a difference in the lives of the people of Haiti on this remarkable life experience."

Dr. Smith examining a little boy.

Dr. Smith shared his experience about the people of Haiti and making a difference, "the people of Haiti were clearly in need of assistance, and very appreciative of what services were provided. They faced similar problems that patients face elsewhere in the tropics, but with a fraction of the resources. They do so without complaining, but with a spirit of optimism, acceptance, and gratitude. For some, we were the first physicians they had ever seen. Our Patient Care team was touched by their patience and resolve."

      

Dr. Jones examining a little girl.

Dr. Smith went on to say that, "As team members, we grew together in a manner I had not experienced since residency, decades ago, when faced with the need to practice in a very new, foreign and somewhat unsettling situation. We worked hard during the day at the clinics, and then would share our meals, clinic experiences, long dusty rides, and dormitory space in the evenings."

Dr. Anderson enjoying the kids after well-child exams.

  

Dr. Smith on the overall experience, "I have developed a desire to continue with this sort of medical mission work through Family Medicine Cares International/Heart to Heart International, and a deep appreciation for those physicians I had the pleasure of working with."

Dr. Chagnon on his experience, "The Medical volunteer experience in Haiti with FMCI and Heart to Heart International was a truly remarkable life experience."