In this edition:
- Message from the Chair
- Sessions of Interest for CFAS at Learn Serve Lead 2022: The AAMC Annual Meeting
- New AAMC Report on Addressing Sexual Harassment in Academic Medicine
- CFAS Advocacy Committee Meeting in September
- CFAS Society Profile: The Association of Professors of Medicine (APM)
- New AAMC leadership Development Offering
- CFAS Reps Publishing in Academic Journals
Message from the Chair
Dear CFAS Colleagues and Friends,
I’m writing this in the “dog days” of August. It’s hot here in the DC area where I live, but as summer vacations wind down for many of us, the work is starting to pick up. I, like many of you, have begun teaching again, and in my case, much of it will be in-person for the first time since early 2020. Work-related activities and travel are also picking up, and with each passing day my calendar is looking less like summer and more like the school year.
The CFAS Administrative Board is also seeing an uptick in its workload after slowing down earlier in the summer. We held an Ad Board meeting recently, focused in large part to crystalize the agenda for our September retreat where we will be looking at our successes as a council over the past two years, but just as importantly, the areas where we feel we have fallen short and could still do more.
I have requested that all CFAS representatives take a moment to complete a brief, one-question anonymous survey, addressing the question, “Where has CFAS been successful in the past two years, and where have we fallen short?”
You should have received a link to the 1-question survey via email, but if you haven’t, you can click on the link below to complete it. If you are a new CFAS rep, please provide your perspective based on what you’ve seen so far, and absolutely share your expectation for the council as you consider the current state of academic medicine faculty. Access the survey here. The CFAS Administrative Board will integrate your feedback into our conversation during our retreat next month.
Our in-person retreat will mark the first time CFAS leaders have met in person since the COVID-19 pandemic began. But as your own calendar is beginning to show, it marks the return to more in-person events. In November, CFAS will meet during Learn Serve Lead 2022: The AAMC Annual Meeting. You already have begun to receive communications about that national event, with many more details to come. I, for one, am looking forward to the positive energy of being in a room with all of you! And of course, please mark your calendars for the stand-alone CFAS Spring Meeting that will take place March 26–29, 2023. The hotel venue and city will be announced very soon, and I am confident that you will be pleased.
Even with these in-person events scheduled in the coming months, we did not want to lose the energy and impact of the CFAS Connects community forum events we hold monthly. We have organized a schedule of events for the remainder of 2022, going into 2023, and plan to engage with all of you, as a community, on some of the most pressing challenges faculty face – and what we, as an AAMC council devoted to the needs of medical school faculty, can do at a national level to address them.
Our first CFAS Connects event will be in September and will focus on sharing the highlights and outcomes from the Ad Board retreat I mentioned earlier, with an opportunity for you to share your views on what we need to do collectively to improve the learning, research, and clinical delivery environments in which we all work. Other events coming up will include a discussion about how medical school faculty can express a diverse array of views in a civil and productive discourse, even when we don’t always agree. This is a topic near and dear to me, and I think it is monumentally important that the community of faculty can work together on expressing a range of views respectfully, without fear, and to inform, rather than argue.
I look forward to engaging with all of you in all modalities – online surveys and newsletters, in-person meetings, and Zoom community forums – as we advance the issues and topics that are so important to us as the faculty in academic health centers across the country.
Yours in good health and wellness,
Aviad “Adi” Haramati, PhD
CFAS Chair
Representing the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health
Sessions of Interest for CFAS at Learn Serve Lead 2022: The AAMC Annual Meeting
Learn Serve Lead 2022: The AAMC Annual Meeting begins Nov. 11 in Nashville. It will be the first in-person AAMC Annual Meeting since 2019. We are very much looking forward to seeing you! CFAS will have specific programming on the schedule that is open to all CFAS reps, including first-time attendees. On Nov. 11, all of our committees will meet in the morning in two cohorts, with snack, lunch, and other refreshments available. All CFAS committees are open to any CFAS rep who is interested in attending, with the exception of the Nominating Committee and the Program Committee.
COHORT 1: Nov. 11, 9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m.
- Mission Alignment Committee (Open to all)
- Advocacy Committee (Open to all)
- Communication Committee (Open to all)
- Nominating & Engagement Committee (Closed committee)
COHORT 2: Nov. 11, 11:15 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
- Biomedical Research and Education Committee (Open to all)
- Diversity Committee (Open to all)
- Faculty Resilience Committee (Open to all)
- Program Committee (Closed committee)
Also on Friday, Nov. 11 at 1:15-2:30 p.m., there will be a special leadership meeting for all council attendees, including CFAS reps. Dr. David Skorton, AAMC president & CEO, and the AAMC Chief Public Policy Officer, will provide the president's and legislative reports followed by Q&A.
This will be followed by our legendary “CFAS Cookies and Coffee” networking session to provide old CFAS friends and first-time attendees alike an opportunity to briefly meet one another before our CFAS Business Meeting from 4 – 5:15 p.m.
In addition to these sessions, there is other CFAS-specific programming throughout the meeting, including networking breakfasts, a new rep orientation, a Knowledge Sharing session, a joint reception with colleagues from GFA, GWIMS, and COD, and other opportunities for you to interact with colleagues from around the country. Also on the main program are about a dozen concurrent sessions with CFAS rep speakers or moderators, covering topics important to our community.
In early September, all CFAS reps with receive a “suggested program” of sessions they might want to consider attending, though it is in no way binding. You are free to attend all available sessions based on your interests.
The Learn Serve Lead online program lists all sessions, times, and locations, including those mentioned above. Note: You can search specifically for CFAS sessions while browsing the online program.
See you in Nashville in November!
New AAMC Report on Addressing Sexual Harassment in Academic Medicine
The AAMC released a new report, Understanding and Addressing Sexual Harassment in Academic Medicine, which found that 22% of all faculty and 34% of women faculty experienced sexual harassment. It also found that:
- The highest rates of harassment among women faculty were in departments of anesthesiology and emergency medicine, and the lowest were in urology and radiology.
- Rates among faculty groups varied by gender, race/ethnicity, department, and age.
- Even for departments with a majority of women, such as pediatrics and OB-GYN, rates of harassment were similar to the overall average of 34%.
The report shares innovative practices to prevent harassment that other institutions can readily adopt. Readers will learn about useful strategies for building cultures of prevention and inclusion in which anti-harassment efforts are integrated throughout institutional operating policies and procedures; are part of the institution’s larger diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy; and reinforce accountability for all members of the community, including leadership.
The topic of sexual harassment in academic medicine is an important and often discussed issue in CFAS and the council has devoted numerous meeting sessions and other meeting programming to address this important issue by eliminating and preventing harassment in academic health centers and academic societies. CFAS previously helped many member societies engage with and become involved in the Societies Consortium on Sexual Harassment in STEMM.
CFAS Advocacy Committee Meeting in September
The next CFAS Advocacy Committee meeting will take place on Wednesday, September 7 from 12-1 p.m. ET. During this meeting, the CFAS Advocacy Committee will hear from AAMC guest speakers Erica Froyd, Senior Director of Advocacy and Engagement, and Victoria Rivas-Vazquez, Senior Director of Strategic Communications, who will present on the upcoming launch of the AAMC’s Value of Academic Medicine campaign and look to members to provide input. The committee will also hear updates from the AAMC’s office of government relations and will plan topics to highlight during the in-person meeting during LSL in November.
The details for the Zoom call are included above, or you can reach out to Anne Berry (aberry@aamc.org) who can forward you the meeting notification.
CFAS Society Profile: The Association of Professors of Medicine (APM)
The Association of Professors of Medicine (APM) is one of the associations of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM). The Alliance includes APM, the Administrators of Internal Medicine (AIM), the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM), the Association of Specialty Professors (ASP), and Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM). The Alliance offers resources and benefits across the entire UME/GME spectrum.
“Benefits of membership in the Alliance include survey and research summaries, Core Clerkship Curriculum, Town Hall meetings, webinars on a variety of topics, Innovation Grants, a job board, conferences, a weekly newsletter, and more,” said APM Council President Alpesh Amin, MD, MBA, who serves as professor and Tom & Mary Cesario chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine.
Commenting specifically on APM, Dr. Amin said that the association provides leadership and direction to academic internal medicine and that APM works to promote cooperation within the academic internal medicine community, as well as to preserve, promote, and further the intellectual base of internal medicine.
APM represents internal medicine department chairs, vice chairs, chairs at affiliated teaching hospitals, and other departmental leaders who are professors of medicine at medical schools in the United States and Canada. APM is the only organization solely dedicated to supporting development in these roles.
Another of these chairs is Anne Curtis, MD, the CFAS rep to APM and the Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and Chair & SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Curtis described the benefits that membership in APM brings, saying, “Everyone who attends our meetings gets opportunities to discuss the same issues that professors of medicine across the country face. We can discuss issues such as DEI, protected time, and pivoting toward telemedicine, and it’s really helpful to hear from our peers across the country.”
APM also has an annual meeting, which is a great networking and learning opportunity for professors of medicine to gain greater insights into the current issues facing chairs of their departments. APM also offers a monthly, virtual town hall where chairs can share ideas and questions in an open discussion forum.
Some of the biggest pressures facing chairs of departments of internal medicine are financial. “We’re seeing increasing mandates on a national scale for protected time for educators in internal medicine. The ACGME recently came out with a new set of recommendations increasing the amount of time educators need to spend on internal medicine residency training programs. These are essentially unfunded mandates, so chairs often don’t know where to get the money from to comply with them. Chairs are always balancing how to resource what our departments do across our research, education, and clinical missions,” said Dr. Curtis.
Dr. Curtis also commented on the benefits that APM receives from its membership in CFAS, noting that, as part of CFAS, APM gets a more in-depth view of what the AAMC is doing on behalf of academic medicine.
“Aside from the general emails we receive, we don’t hear much about all that the AAMC is doing on our behalf. But CFAS has meetings that help us hear more about the AAMC’s various initiatives. In some cases, these meetings help people get more involved with their own societies,” said Dr. Curtis.
Issues with clerkships and residency and fellowship training in departments of medicine are not unique, and Dr. Curtis added that it would be great if CFAS and the AAMC could convene different specialties together to look at common issues in residency training and clerkships in order to find potential solutions.
New AAMC Leadership Development Offering
The AAMC is offering a new leadership development program, Leading Organizations to Health, that teaches mid-to-senior-level leaders the skills needed to lead organizational change by incorporating the best of adaptive leadership principles, positive psychology, complexity science, and relationship-centered care. While dates for the sessions have not yet been announced, you may sign up for updates as the program offerings develop.
The program combines elements of an advanced leadership seminar, executive coaching, self-reflection, a learning laboratory, and an eight-month consultation on organizational change.
Over the course of the program, participants will:
- Learn practical, powerful, and psychologically sophisticated theories of individual and organizational behavior to help you make sense of what’s happening in your organization and guide effective action.
- Develop high level communication and group facilitation skills that will help you energize teams, set clear expectations, address challenging behaviors, resolve conflict, and maintain accountability.
- Pursue reflective self-exploration and personal renewal to help you engage in your leadership role from a deep sense of integrity and authenticity, and to align your work with your personal sense of purpose.
- For questions about the program, email learningandleadershipdevelopment@aamc.org.
CFAS Reps Publishing in Academic Journals
In recent weeks, a couple CFAS reps have had articles published in academic journals, including CFAS Ad Board member and chair of the CFAS Advocacy Committee Arthur R. Derse, MD, JD, and former CFAS Ad Board member and former editor in chief of Academic Medicine David Sklar, MD. Dr. Derse’s article, “The Physician–Patient Relationship,” was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and focused on the complex ethical considerations in the physician-patient relationship given a range of ethics concerns arising from health law and the prevalence of misinformation.
On a slightly related topic, Dr. Sklar wrote an invited commentary in Academic Medicine titled, “How Academic Medicine Can Amplify Truth Amid the Noise of Misinformation, Inaccuracies, and Lies.” Dr. Derse is Julia and David Uihlein Chair in Medical Humanities at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the CFAS representative for the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) and Dr. Sklar is a former CFAS rep for the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) and senior advisor to the provost and professor of medicine, College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona.
Additionally, the Society of General Physiologists has given CFAS Immediate Past Chair Gabriela Popescu, PhD, the Sharona Gordon Award in recognition of her clear and sustained impact on improving equity and inclusivity in the fields of physiology and biophysics. Dr. Popescu is professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo.
CFAS reps have often published in Academic Medicine and have contributed to the national dialogue through other AAMC communications, such as AAMCNews, which welcomes opinion pieces from CFAS reps and other AAMC constituents.
If you have recently had a paper or perspective in an academic journal, or if you've had a perspective or op-ed published in a news outlet, or if you have received a recent award or honor, please let us know so we can help amplify your work!
Tell Us How You’re Doing
Please keep the lines of communication open so we can provide you with the resources and information that would be most useful. It is helpful for the AAMC to understand in detail what is happening on the ground at the medical schools, teaching hospitals, and academic societies we serve. Please email Eric at eweissman@aamc.org, or call directly at 301-437-2572 with updates or feedback from your perspective. You can also reach out with questions or comments to CFAS Communications Specialist Alex Bolt.
If you are looking for information about CFAS, find what you need on our website, from the names of CFAS leaders, to updates on committee and working group initiatives, to upcoming offerings and meetings, and finally, current and previous editions of CFAS News.
Do you have an article or study coming out? A new promotion or professional accomplishment? Let us know and we'll feature it in an upcoming edition of the CFAS Rep Bulletin.
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