In this edition:
- Message from the Chair
- CFAS Spring Meeting Overview
- CFAS Committee Changes
- CFAS Committees FAQ
- CFAS Networking Opportunities
Message from the Chair
Dear CFAS Colleagues and Friends,
I am writing this month’s message with a single, focused goal: to encourage all representatives to attend our first in-person CFAS Spring meeting since 2019. I am personally excited not just to see so many of you in person, but also to resume the connections, conversations, and creative problem-solving around an array of issues that define the work of CFAS.
While the details of the meeting’s program and its many sessions are available for you to review, I want to underscore the intangibles of the meeting, because in my many years with CFAS and its predecessor, CAS – the Council of Academic Societies – I have gained just as much, if not more, from the personal and professional connections as I have from the formal CFAS programs. While we have dramatically increased the ability for reps to connect and work within CFAS through virtual sessions such as CFAS Connects, my sense is that it is at our in-person meetings where magic happens, where a casual conversation in the line to coffee leads to collaborations and new-found friendships.
I also want to highlight the CFAS committees. These working groups are available to any CFAS representative who wishes to participate. CFAS committees address an array of topics, from well-being to mission alignment, and from medical education to biomedical research training that you, as medical school faculty, think about daily. If you are interested in a range of issues, such as diversity and inclusion or advocacy and government relations, there is a CFAS committee for you. I urge you, as an attendee of our spring meeting, to look through the list of committee meetings taking place on the morning of March 27, pick one or two that are interesting to you, and just show up. Join the conversation. Add your voice to the dialogue. Be part of a project that the committee may be planning. You will likely be enriched not only by the valuable resources and perspectives presented, but also by the opportunities for new connections that could significantly impact your work back home.
Also, in Salt Lake City, we will debut an all-new committee: the Faculty as Medical Educators Committee, and will feature newly retooled and renamed committees, such as the Biomedical Research and Training Committee, the CFAS Engagement Committee (previously the Communication Committee) and the renamed CFAS Faculty and Organizational Well-being Committee (previously the Faculty Resilience Committee). There’s more detail about this in an article below.
And don’t forget our popular receptions – both the opening night reception at the conclusion of the first day and the CFAS Knowledge Sharing session toward the end of Day Two. While the refreshments and snacks may get you in the door, the conversation and connections will keep you busy. These sessions are designed for you to share your experiences, get to know your CFAS rep colleagues from around the country, and make new friends. Similarly, our deliberately unstructured breakfast sessions are meant for you to meet people and have others get to know you.
Finally, you’ll notice that all CFAS meetings take place in rooms with round tables rather than theater seating or rows of tables. We want you to sit in groups and enjoy conversation before and after the sessions start and to actively engage in the interactive elements that nearly all of our meeting sessions have designed into their learning models. Your experience at this meeting should be just as much fun and engaging as is it professionally enriching and instructive. The leadership of CFAS wants you to leave Salt Lake City equipped with new knowledge and also in touch with new friends.
So, if you have not already registered or booked your hotel room, please do so now at this link for the 2023 CFAS Spring Meeting. It’s coming up soon and I’m counting on seeing you there.
Yours in good health and wellness,
Aviad “Adi” Haramati, PhD
CFAS Chair
Representing the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health
CFAS Spring Meeting
The 2023 CFAS Spring Meeting in Salt Lake City, March 27-29, is only a few weeks away, and promises to be a special event given it will be our first in-person meeting since 2019. Thinking back on our last in-person spring meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, seems like a lifetime ago. Many of the reps who will be gathering in Salt Late City will be attending their first CFAS meeting, and while quite a few members of our community saw one another in Nashville for the AAMC Learn Serve Lead Annual Meeting, it is always a different event when we gather as a council alone given the intimacy of the meeting and the focus of the topics.
Registration for the meeting will remain open right up until the event itself. We were able to keep the registration rate lower than even our 2019 registration fee with full understanding of the difficulty many of you may be experiencing with securing travel funds.
In addition to several speakers from the CFAS community, other speakers will include AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD; AAMC Chief Public Policy Officer Danielle Turnipseed, JD, AAMC Chief Scientific Officer Ross McKinney, MD, and Michael Good, MD, Senior VP for Health Sciences, CEO of University of Utah Health, and Executive Dean of the University of Utah Health/Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.
The meeting will also feature the next installment of our popular Ignite-style presentations. If you’re new to CFAS, these presentations – which have become a mainstay of our meetings – are brief, informal talks, 5-7 minutes each, with only 3-4 slides. They tell a story or feature a slice of detail about something you’ve done as a faculty member, or a program or concept you developed at your school or within your society.
The theme this year – Mission Alignment – should focus on activity and work that seeks to find balance and nuance in the mission areas of your faculty role. How have you ensured time for academic work? How has refocusing work impacted your faculty experience? What solutions have you found to balance clinical duties with research or teaching? How does teaching integrate into your research? How do you personally find balance? How have you worked with a chair or dean on a plan that has been especially successful for you?
Any of those questions would be an interesting topic to explore – bonus points for positive, solution-oriented presentations. About 5 of these quick talks will flow one after another during a session on Tuesday, March 28, from 2:45 – 3:45. There will be an opportunity for discussion and Q&A built into the session.
Immediately following the session will be a conversation with Mike Good. Your brief ignite talks will help inform that discussion – so think of it as an opportunity to showcase for an academic health center leader the practices and concepts that have made a critical difference for you.
Please send proposals to Eric Weissman (eweissman@aamc.org). Each proposal should have a title and no more than four or five sentences explaining the concept. Please send your proposal by Friday, March 10.
A CFAS Connects session on Wednesday, Feb. 22, highlighted important information for CFAS reps to know before they attend the meeting. A recording of that session is available here and a written summary will be made available on the CFAS Resources webpage in the coming days.
A full schedule of the meeting is available online.
CFAS Committee Changes
CFAS reps attending the 2023 CFAS Spring Meeting will notice a number of changes to CFAS committees, including the formation of a brand new one, the CFAS Committee for Faculty as Medical Educators, which will be chaired by CFAS Ad Board member Lily Belfi, MD. Dr. Belfi is the junior CFAS rep for the Association of University Radiologists, an associate professor of clinical radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and associate attending radiologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Campus. The charge of the new committee will be to identify issues and challenges of relevance to faculty who are engaged in medical education (both clinicians and biomedical science educators), develop opportunities to discuss these issues and providing the faculty voice and perspective on educational matters that impact them, their learners, and their institutions.
The work of this committee will be to improve and nurture the role of faculty as medical educators and its approach will be to encourage open communication among educators. The committee will support creative solutions as faculty navigate the ever-changing landscape of undergraduate and graduate medical education.
Other recent changes to CFAS committees include the renaming of the CFAS Faculty Resilience Committee to the CFAS Faculty and Organizational Well-being Committee, the renaming of the CFAS Communication Committee to the CFAS Engagement Committee, and the renaming of the Biomedical Research and Education Committee (BREC) to the Biomedical Research and Training Committee. Additionally, the Mission Alignment Committee will have an adjusted focus.
CFAS Committee FAQ
One question we hear often on the CFAS team – especially from newer reps or those who haven’t been to a meeting in a while – is how you, as a CFAS rep, can participate in our committees. Here’s a brief FAQ:
- How can I find information about the CFAS committees? All CFAS committees are listed with a brief overview of their work on the CFAS website. The chairs of the committees can also be contacted from this webpage.
- Can I attend CFAS committee meetings even as a new rep? Yes! All committees, with the exception of the Program Committee and the Nominating Committee, are open to any CFAS rep or affiliate who is interested in the topic and wants to share in the conversation. You don’t need an invitation to come, nor do you need a past history with the committee. Just show up and be part of the conversation. Also, society executives in attendance are welcome to join committee meetings.
- What do the committees work on? It varies from committee to committee. Some committees have developed publications or original content. Some have developed web resources or faculty surveys. Some have ensured that relevant, related programming makes it into Learn Serve Lead: The AAMC Annual Meeting and the CFAS Spring Meeting. Some have focused on providing a forum for members to talk and share resources freely to nurture and develop ideas on an important issue. Others, such as the Program Committee and Nominating Committee, keep key operational elements of CFAS running. As a member of a committee, you play a role in setting the agenda.
- What about the Program or Nominating Committee? Can I be part of them? Those two committees have members who are appointed and serve in term-limited seats. Any active CFAS reps potentially can serve on the committees and the seats are routinely refreshed. Send an email to me (eweissman@aamc.org) for more details.
- Who are the leaders of the CFAS committee? In almost all cases, committee chairs serve on the CFAS Administrative Board, ensuring a direct connection to the work of the committees and CFAS leadership. Different committees have different approaches to leadership – for instance, some have a co-chair or vice chair, and some have a leadership team. The best way to be get involved in committee leadership is to establish a working history in a committee that interests you by showing up to their meetings.
- When do CFAS committees meet? In the past, CFAS Committee met only during our spring meeting and the AAMC Annual Meeting. Since 2020, all CFAS committees have established virtual meeting schedules too. Those extra meetings are announced via the listserv and among active committee participants. At our in-person meetings (such as in Salt Lake city coming up at the end of March), CFAS committees meet in two concurrent cohorts before the main program kicks off. Here’s the schedule for Salt Lake City:
March 27: 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.
Advocacy Committee (Chair: Art Derse)
Engagement Committee (Chair: Kimberly Lumpkins – NEW/REFRESHED committee)
Faculty as Medical Educators Committee (Chair: Lily Belfi – NEW committee)
Mission Alignment Committee (Chair: Stewart Babbott – revised structure)
Nominating Committee (Closed) (Chair Gabriela Popescu – schedule TBD)
March 27: 9:45 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.
Biomedical Research and Training Committee (Chair: Neil Osheroff – NEW/REFRESHED structure)
Diversity & Inclusion Committee (Chair: Monica Baskin)
Faculty and Organizational Well-being Committee (Chair: Catherine Pipas with Jon Courand – NEW committee name)
Program Committee (Closed) (Chair: Nita Ahuja)
CFAS Networking Opportunities
The CFAS Spring Meeting has several networking opportunities built into the program, but notably, the University of Utah Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine will be a sponsor of our opening reception on Monday evening, March 27. Our university of Utah colleagues will also sponsor a wellness yoga session prior to the program starting on Wednesday, March 29, with other treats planned. The CFAS Knowledge Sharing session also functions as a networking session where you can share your ideas about the meeting, the state of CFAS, and what you’re seeing in academic medicine overall. And of course, our unscheduled open breakfast sessions serve as an opportunity for you to catch up with old friends and make new connections.
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.