STFM Responsibilities for AFMO Research Strategic Plan

The Academic Family Medicine Organizations(AFMO) Research Subcommittee has developed a strategic plan for building research capacity within our discipline. The first step in the development of the strategic plan involved the generation of a document attempting to answer the question, “What does it mean to build research capacity?”¹ Using that document as a conceptual framework, the subcommittee developed an AFMO Research Strategic Plan, which has been endorsed by the leadership of all of the member organizations. A structure was developed for monitoring the accomplishment of the various aspects of the strategic plan, and an action plan was developed by asking each organization to choose and take responsibility for specific items from the strategic plan that fit with the organization’s mission, interests, and activities. The AFMO Research Subcommittee provides oversight of the plan. The subcommittee monitors progress on the goals and facilitates interorganizational efforts on implementation and development strategies of shared goals. The NAPCRG and AAFP boards have agreed to provide staff support to assist the AFMO Research Subcommittee in this oversight process.

The AFMO Research Strategic Plan provides a general template for the STFM Research Committee to review and consider as it develops and prioritizes research capacity-building sessions and other research-oriented sessions for the annual spring conference. The plan can be helpful for various STFM groups and committees, including the STFM Board of Directors, in guiding decisions regarding research issues. In addition, STFM has taken particular responsibility for several aspects of the strategic plan that were deemed especially relevant to our membership.

One way of conceptualizing the training of family medicine researchers is that it occurs in stages, with different objectives for learners at the various educational stages. STFM has historically taken particular responsibility for predoctoral education; therefore, it is appropriate for STFM to take a lead role in those portions of the research strategic plan dealing with medical students and predoctoral program directors.

Medical students need exposure to positive models of family medicine research so that those students with research interest will not choose other disciplines with the misperception that they cannot have a viable research career in family medicine. Also, many students interested in family medicine might think of research only in terms of basic bench research. Exposure to research that answers questions relevant to the daily practice of primary care medicine could spark an interest in future research participation in such students, whether as investigators or as active members of a practice-based research network.

Predoctoral directors have a key role in presenting positive models of family medicine research to our medical students, and many of them might have little background in research. Predoctoral directors themselves should have a solid understanding of the scope of family medicine research, and successful programs and methods for exposing students to our research and researchers should be widely disseminated.

One important area of research that is ripe for attention from family medicine researchers is the investigation of health disparities based on race or ethnicity and the development of interventions to correct such disparities. STFM has a long history of leadership in this area, and this topic is of considerable interest for many STFM members. The STFM Research Committee has already sponsored a number of special sessions dealing with the availability of funding for research on health disparities and the delineation of the important questions for family medicine research regarding health disparities. Three sessions related to this topic were extremely well received at the recent STFM annual meeting in Atlanta, and this theme will continue to be explored in future meetings.

Another area where family medicine researchers and educators can make a sizable scholarly contribution is educational research. Family medicine faculty members often play large roles in medical school, residency, and fellowship education. There is a tremendous opportunity to look at curricular outcomes objectively and disseminate the results to other educators. The STFM Research Committee is developing both a full-day workshop (for the 2004 STFM Predoctoral Conference in January) and a skills-building session (for the 2004 STFM Annual Spring Conference in May) that will help the development of educational research projects. These sessions will address such concepts as formulating educational research questions, designing studies, and publishing results.

The image of family medicine research and researchers needs to be improved. Research is vital to the survival of family medicine, and the perceived value of our research to the health care system, practicing clinicians, academic centers, research funders, the public, and other constituencies needs to be increased. Ideally, everyone involved in family medicine would have a role in our research mission as investigators, participants, or active consumers. Although we have made some strides in these areas during the recent years, this ongoing concern will continue to receive attention from STFM and our other family medicine organizations.

The STFM Research Committee will take primary responsibility for planning activities aimed at impacting these and other issues from the AFMO Research Strategic Plan and for coordinating STFM’s activities with those of our other family medicine organizations. We also hope, however, that all STFM groups and members will pay attention to the AFMO Research Strategic Plan and take advantage of opportunities to further our discipline’s research mission.

W. Perry Dickinson MD,

University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

Erik J. Lindbloom, MD, MSPH,

University of Missouri-Columbia

• © 2004 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.