American Board of Family Medicine Announces Recipients of the 2020 AAFP Chapter Pilots
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he American Board of Family Medicine has been grateful for the opportunity to work with AAFP Chapters to mutually serve AAFP members who are ABFM Diplomates or candidates in support of their certification journey. In 2019 ABFM introduced an outreach initiative that gave us the opportunity to meet with AAFP Chapter Executives and their members in their “home” chapters, as well as to provide enhanced and personalized education about certification activities and requirements to these physicians. We have learned much from this process that has already made a positive difference in our communication strategies and our programmatic planning. Everyone benefits when we are working together on behalf of family medicine and family physicians! Earlier this year, our Board of Directors endorsed the addition of a State Chapter Pilot Project opportunity for 2020. Through this, ABFM sought to provide support to chapters seeking to create innovative ways to address member needs in ways that also would align with ABFM’s Strategic Plan: • Advancing the certification process • Supporting family physicians through the certification process • Promoting positive professionalism • Supporting medical education • Transforming healthcare at the state and local levels A subcommittee of ABFM staff and board members had the pleasure of reviewing submissions from chapters of all sizes and from each region of the country. Ten chapters were selected for support in 2020-2021, 32
MISSOURI FAMILY PHYSICIAN July - September 2020
encompassing a variety of exciting initiatives. ABFM is excited to work with these Chapters, learning from these chapters and identifying ways that their efforts could be replicated by other chapters through the creation of materials and processes that result from these pilots.
MAFP IS THE RECIPIENT OF ONE OF THESE GRANTS.
The MAFP project is aimed at increasing student interest in Family Medicine by increasing the robustness and collaboration of FMIGs across the state with statewide residency programs. The MAFP will develop a unified tracking mechanism to monitor and evaluate FMIG interactions with pre-clinical medical students, setting a goal of 100 students per year. They will also facilitate four or more meetings per year with FMIGs across the state to learn from each other. A long-term goal is to build relationships between family medicine residents/programs across the state and the medical schools’ FMIGs. Other states that were awarded grants are: Alaska, California, Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Dakota. ABFM is proud to support each of these Chapters with their initiatives. The ongoing collaboration with ABFM diplomates’ “home” chapters will help us to continue to improve the value of certification. By better understanding the local environments and needs, we can better support physicians in their certification efforts. We look forward to supporting these types of initiatives and communicating on their progress throughout the coming year.
