Committee Reports

Communications Committee Report

As I eagerly undertook my new role as chair of the Communications Committee, I was cognizant of following on the heels of the effective outgoing chair, Jacob Reider, MD. During his tenure as chair, the committee and others made significant changes that move STFM communication into more digital formats and continue to benefit the Society. Examples of these changes include transitioning the STFM Bookstore to an Amazon.com affiliate and developing and promoting STFM’s Family Medicine Digital Resources Library (FMDRL) (www.fmdrl.org), which is positioned to become the preeminent electronic educational resource. We have continued on this trajectory, doing the ongoing work of support and oversight for the Society’s multiple forms of communication. For this work, I would like to thank the members of the Communications Committee, who have so wonderfully served the Society: Thomas Agresta, MD; Monique Davis-Smith, MD; Antonnette Graham, PhD; Paul Gordon, MD, MPH; Lucille Marchand, BSN, MD; Anne Musser, DO; and Richard Neill, MD. They continuously meet the committee’s responsibilities, and their dedication and thoughtful deliberation can be seen in the many communications services offered by the Society. The committee is ably staffed by STFM Communications Director Traci Nolte.

Some highlights of the committee’s work include:

Family Medicine
The journal is our main and best-known publication, and it is one of our most-identified products. Editor Barry Weiss, MD, and Associate Editors Mindy Smith, MD, MS, and Mike Magill, MD, do an excellent job in journal oversight, development, and maintenance of quality. Our columns (For the Office-based Teacher of Family Medicine—Editor William Huang, MD; Innovations in Family Medicine Education—Editor Josh Freeman, MD, and Coeditor Alison Dobbie, MD; Lessons From Our Learners—Editor William Grant, EdD; Literature and the Arts in Family Medicine Education—Editor Johanna Shapiro, PhD; Book Reviews—Editor Cathleen Morrow, MD; International Family Medicine—Editor Jack Rodnick, MD; and Letters to the Editor—Editor Karl Miller, MD) add both interest and value to our editorial mix.

I’d like to give special thanks to Mike Magill, who this April will step down from his position as associate editor. Mike’s critical analytic skills and good judgment have served Family Medicine well for 15 years. STFM and the discipline are indebted to his long-term commitment to enhancing scholarship for the discipline.

The journal has cultivated its niche as the scholarly journal for family medicine education topics, and it is increasingly recognized in national and international circles. Current and archived full-text journal articles, along with advertising information and instructions for authors, are available on the public side of our Web site, www.stfm.org, offering better distribution and recognition of our members’ scholarly works. Family Medicine online continues to be the one most-visited page of the STFM Web site, receiving more than 1,300 hits each week.

Awards
One of the committee’s most important tasks is selecting the recipients of three of the Society’s annual awards: Recognition, Excellence in Education, and Innovative Program awards. It is both inspiring and humbling to review the accomplishments of the outstanding members who are nominated. This year’s nominees were no exception, and the committee has recommended highly deserving awardees that are a credit to STFM. The selection process inevitably leaves outstanding individuals and projects without the public recognition of awards. We congratulate all the nominees on their accomplishments, and we thank the nominators for their efforts. We rely on you, the members, to identify and nominate deserving colleagues for next year’s consideration. We hope to make this award process more visible as appropriate to this celebration of our members’ accomplishments.

STFM Bookstore
As indicated above, the STFM Bookstore is now an Amazon.com affiliate. This means that STFM continues to market members’ books and other titles that are identified to be of interest to our members through our portal at www.stfm.org/bookstore without the financial burden of holding a stock of books.

STFM is given a small percentage of all transactions (books, cameras, clothing, anything that Amazon.com sells) as long as the initial link was made through our STFM Amazon.com portal. You don’t have to be an STFM member for the organization to get credit, as long as the purchase goes through our portal. So spread the word and have your friends and colleagues bookmark our portal link, www.stfm.org/bookstore. Proceeds from our bookstore link will help us continue our financial commitments to important activities like the Annals of Family Medicine and Future of Family Medicine programs.

STFM will promote books listed from our recommended list at our conferences. These books are placed on our recommended list after undergoing a review process. For more information on our Bookstore review process, visit www.stfm.org/bookstore/peerreview.cfm.

Electronic Communications
Our Web site, www.stfm.org, averages nearly 20,000 unique visitors a month. The STFM Web site offers members online conference submission and registration, membership update and renewal, various links to family medicine education resources, STFM group information, STFM Bookstore offerings through our Amazon portal, and online full-text Family Medicine articles and classified ads.

The Communications Committee is working on a Web site redesign that is planned for late 2007. The Web site redesign will include ways for members to easily access the Society information that is most relevant to them with the establishment of a “My STFM” area for STFM members. We are also looking for ways that the Web site can convey the unique culture of STFM that we all experience at our meetings.

STFM continues to develop its FMDRL. This library, funded through a 3-year grant from the National Library of Medicine, includes curriculum materials from all levels of family medicine education: preclinical, clinical, predoctoral, residency, and faculty development. More than 750 resources now reside on the FMDRL Web site, www.fmdrl.org.

FMDRL also has functionality to allow collaborative spaces for STFM groups and committees. Groups can now host listserves and Web spaces within FMDRL to help members connect with each other.

The STFM electronic preceptor newsletter, The Teaching Physician, continues to be popular; more than 90 subscriptions have been purchased by departments and residency programs. Each subscription has the ability to touch hundreds of preceptors throughout the nation, ensuring great communication to this important segment of family medicine educators. We thank our volunteer editors of this newsletter: Thomas Agresta, MD; Alec Chessman, MD; Mark Ebell, MD, MS; Betty Gatipon, MD; Caryl Heaton, DO; William Huang, MD; Jon Neher, MD; and Richard Usatine, MD, for their dedicated service to this valuable resource. For more information about this newsletter, visit www.stfm.org/teachingphysician/index.htm.

Monograph Review
Committee members serve as content reviewers for monograph publications under development by STFM groups. Groups that are considering submitting monographs to STFM for publication should review the Monograph Submission Guidelines listed on the STFM Web site at www.stfm.org/monogph.html.

Elizabeth Naumburg, MD, Chair

Communications Committee

Elizabeth Naumburg, MD, Chair
University of Rochester

Thomas Agresta, MD
University of Connecticut

Y. Monique Davis-Smith, MD
Mercer University

Antonnette Graham, PhD
Case Western Reserve University

Paul Gordon, MD, MPH
University of Arizona

Lucille Lomas Marchand, BSN, MD
University of Wisconsin

Anne Musser, DO
Alaska Family Medicine Residency
Anchorage, Alaska

Richard Neill, MD
University of Pennsylvania

STFM Staff Liaison:
Traci Nolte