Tribute to Annals of Family Medicine Associate Editor John Frey

John Holkeboer

doi:10.1370/afm.2797

Key words:

tribute

John Frey, MD, is moving on after this issue of Annals of Family Medicine after 14 years of service as associate editor. He will be missed.

His career has included such posts as teacher and Residency Director at UMass Medical School (1973-1979), editor of Family Medicine (1984-1991), President of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) (1998-1999), and Professor and Chair at University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Family Medicine (1993-2006). In addition to helping organize two G. Gayle Stephens’ Keystone conferences in 2000 and 2015, he has also served on the Board of Curators at the Center for the History of Family Medicine, from 2002 to 2005, and on the National Library of Medicine’s Literature Selection Technical Review Committee, from 2003 to 2007. In 2017, he was awarded the John G. Walsh Award for Lifetime Contributions to Family Medicine by the AAFP. The above comprise only a sampling of John’s service and recognitions.

A recurring theme of John’s contributions to the discipline is a strong feeling for the art within the science. Former editor-in-chief of the Annals of Family Medicine Kurt Stange and Reflections editor Robin Gotler write:

When John Frey joined the Annals team in 2007, his goal was to give back to his specialty, as he’s done for decades. He brought deep well-grounded knowledge of family medicine and family practice, and experience as an ingenious editor. He listened closely, spoke with humility, and acted with good will.
In 2017, John launched and became lead editor of the Innovations in Primary Care feature, a forum for novel ideas based on the lived experience of those providing person- and relationship-centered, community-engaged primary care. John’s creativity and leadership met a longstanding need for information that can make a difference on patient care’s frontlines. The Annals, and the field, are better for his contributions.

As an editor, he is a passionate advocate of the written word. Annals’ Managing Editor Beth Anderson says,

John’s mastery of language celebrates the ability of words to tell a story and make a difference. We in the editorial office have appreciated John’s tireless crusades against unnecessary nominalization (turning verbs into nouns), overly long article titles, redundancy, and stating the ‘bleeding obvious.’

In 2019, John’s disarming good spirit was crucial to helping a new Annals’ editorial team find their footing. In 2020, during the challenging first months of the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, his tireless work reviewing manuscripts and article queries was instrumental in creating an urgently needed COVID-19 preprint collection on the AnnFamMed.org website.

Annals’ associate editor Mike Johansen describes him as “a curious soul mixed with a wealth of wisdom. I’m a better editor because of John; opinions are fine but listening to others is equally important.”

A sentiment that sums up our feelings as well. Cheers, John!