Exploring the Family Medicine Factbook: The History and Background

It's family medicine.

And so there's a lot of the, part of the reason I ask about you and the center is that I'm not really sure a lot of the physicians and the public know about the center or what the extent of what family medicine does, a family physician does.

We're not one-dimensional at all.

And I think that's part of what this fact book is all about.

We had One version of it, the initial version, when did that first one come out?

Put that out, it really launched it in 2023.

And to tie it back to the center, you're right.

The board has long decided that operating within a certification space alone without trying to change the environment that our diplomates work in and the patients that they serve need to thrive in requires more of a commitment to research, to policy-facing evidence-making, and to making sure that the world knows really what a family physician is and what that title means.

And that requires understanding us from a really broad lens, and that's what the fact book's trying to do.

So I'm assuming that the first fact book must have been pretty successful in that you're pivoting to a 2.0. Why a 2.0?

Well, I'll back up just to say the first fact book recognized that if we're going to ask our diplomates at multiple points in their careers when they engage with the board to fill out survey items that tell us about themselves, tell us about their practice, the patients they serve, their frustrations.

We ask questions about how's your health IT serving you and your patients right now, for example.

that if they're going to go to that trouble and we're going to turn it into research, we also need to put it in the hands of a lay community of policymakers in really simple terms.

And that's what birthed the first fact book.

And I would say it's a success.

It wasn't something that someone paid for, necessarily even asked for.

We just thought it's time to put out there something that can sit on a coffee table or in this digital age and a very easy to digest web space.

And we've definitely found, as your team has helped us to learn, that people are using it, that they say this is a simple, easily referenceable way of understanding the discipline of family medicine.

Another question I'd like to ask, why would our board, the American Board of Family Medicine, be interested in co-sponsoring a Backbook 2.0? What questions are we trying to answer?

I think that's a great question, Gary.

And you know and I know that facts are increasingly under siege.

There are not enough that we can rely on.

And I think our board's aware that our diplomates face an environment where there is too much disinformation and not enough reliable information, and that includes about our own discipline.

And the board recognizes that if it's going to help our diplomates achieve high performing primary care that they're trained for and capable of, we have to be a contributor to that environment.

And so putting out something that is built on the voice of the diplomates and not just one or two of them, but all of our diplomates in some way, form, or fashion inform this fact book.