SFMMS INTERVIEW: JACK RESNECK, MD, AMA President-Elect Steve Heilig, MPH Next year, dermatologist Jack Resneck, MD will become the first AMA president from San Francisco since the 1960s. He is a graduate of UCSF and practices there, where he is vice-chair of his department, and has been President of the California Society for Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery, board chair of the AMA and chair of their Council on Legislation as well. He has an appointment in UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, and here shares some of his background and interests, how his clinical practice informs his advocacy work, and how the AMA is addressing its “reputational lag” in the modern era. – Steve Heilig, MPH and then spent a little time working in Washington, DC. I loved working on big issues that could affect lots of patients and physicians, but I realized I was missing that special one-on-one connection of the patient/physician relationship. I feel like I’ve been incredibly lucky to end up with a career that lets me serve both as a physician taking care of individual patients—and also working at the policy level in organized medicine to make it easier for all of us to care for our patients. How did you choose your specialty? That was a last-minute choice. I had already filled out my applications for residencies in internal medicine. But a lastminute dermatology rotation in fourth year convinced me to follow the family footsteps and return to dermatology.
Congratulations on becoming the AMA president elect – the first from San Francisco in decades and the first ever from UCSF. Thanks! It’s exciting to be in this role as a Californian and UCSF physician, and also the first dermatologist in about a hundred years. To start, where are you from? I grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana. My father is a physician who did his residency training at UCSF, so we had a three-year detour to the Bay Area when I was a little kid. Subsequently, we returned to Louisiana where I lived until leaving for college at Brown University. I came to UCSF for medical school after a brief time working in DC, and I stayed here for internship, residency, fellowship, and then joined the faculty. Do you recall first making your decision to go into medicine? I don’t remember a particular moment; growing up in a medical family and watching my dad love his career as a physician working in a small practice clearly had an impact. As a kid, you often think you want to do something different from your parents, but I fortunately recognized at some point that medicine was pretty cool. I was a policy major as an undergraduate WWW.SFMMS.ORG
What was your first exposure to, or awareness of, the AMA? As a medical student, I wasn’t yet very aware of everything the AMA does for physicians and our patients. I suspect I held many assumptions based on “reputational lag” from several decades ago. When I was a resident at UCSF, I was chosen by my specialty society to be part of the AMA Resident and Fellows Section, with very little knowledge of what to expect. Once I arrived, I kind of fell in love with the whole process. Many physicians aren’t aware that AMA policy is set by a large House of Delegates, with physicians representing state medical associations, national specialty societies, federal health services, and others. The policymaking process is incredibly democratic. It begins with resolutions that originate from physicians, and the ensuing testimony and debates are science and evidence-based. I quickly realized as a resident witnessing this process that policy was being set by people who cared and showed up to do the work. So I kept showing up and building relationships with colleagues, including the fantastic delegation from the California Medical Association. I kept witnessing the difference that individual physicians could make bringing great policy ideas, and the impact that AMA could ultimately have carrying out those policies. The process can actually be quite nimble—I remember one meeting where a group of medical students brought a resolution to ask AMA to help their colleagues under DACA program protections facing a risk of deportation, and almost immediately, the AMA was engaged nationally on the issue. It’s not uncommon to see small groups of people show up and convince colleagues of issues they care about and watch a large and fortunately influential organization make a positive difference. continued on page 8
JULY/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2021 SAN FRANCISCO MARIN MEDICINE
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