Starfield IV

Early this year, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the organization that accredits all Family Medicine residencies in the United States, announced a “major revision” of the standards for Family Medicine residencies. Such major revisions are rare—at most every 10 years. Given the practice life of family physicians, this revision will determine the shape and promise of family medicine for the next generation.

This opportunity comes at a momentous time. Even before COVID-19 and renewed attention on social justice and health disparities, the amplitude and pace of transformation of health care in the US has been greater than any time in our careers. Life expectancy has begun to decrease, health indicators have not improved in any measurable fashion, and health inequities continue to plague us. Just as the specialty of Family Medicine did in 1969, it is a time for us to ask where we want to go.

All major Family Medicine organizations featured on this page are working together to best advise what Family Medicine residency programs need to do to best prepare Family physicians for the future. It is essential to get meaningful input from all sectors of our discipline: practicing clinicians, educators, researchers, administrators, learners. A virtual national summit is planned on December 6–7, 2020 and all organizations of Family Medicine have accepted responsibility for engaging their members in some combination of focus groups.

This website will document and track our community dialogue, leading to a national summit on December 6 and 7 and a dedicated journal issue with peer reviewed papers. It will be open to all in Family Medicine and to those interested in the future of Family Medicine and health care. As of September 1, it will include 15 Background Briefs that are intended as “fire starters” for our national conversation, as well as a series of Core Questions that the Planning Taskforce and the Summit Participants will be addressing through this process. We will also detail the work and the findings of the participating Family Medicine organizations as they engage their communities for input and recommendations in the section entitled Community Dialogue.