Family Medicine Advocacy—It Depends on All of Us!

Advocating for our members and promoting the value of family medicine to legislators and policymakers is an important priority for STFM. To do this, STFM gets involved in legislative and regulatory issues that affect our members and family medicine. We also strive to keep our members informed about Washington’s legislative and regulatory activities through e-mail alerts and The Briefing Room, a blog-style Web update that you’ll find on http://www.stfm.org. Members can learn even more about advocacy at the annual Family Medicine Congressional Conference held in May in Washington DC. On the STFM Web site, http://www.stfm.org/advocacy, you’ll find links that will give you details of STFM position on the various topics. The links will also provide you with the background and updates on the issues. You’ll even find position papers and letters to help you be an effective advocate for academic family medicine. STFM conducts its legislative activities through the Council of Academic Family Medicine (CAFM). STFM works with CAFM because it allows us to collaborate with other academic family medicine groups, making our resources go farther and our efforts more successful. Other groups that are part of CAFM include the Association of Departments of Family Medicine, the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors, and the North American Primary Care Research Group. We also work in tandem with the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) in our policy development through our Academic Family Medicine Advocacy Committee (AFMAC)—a body that includes the 4 CAFM organizations and the AAFP and meets twice a year. AFMAC is chaired by STFM.