The Council of Academic Family Medicine (CAFM) brings together the leadership of the academic family medicine organizations to act on strategic initiatives that support academic family medicine and the discipline. 

      CAFM Organizations:

• Association of Departments of Family Medicine
• Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors
• North American Primary Care Research Group 
• Society of Teachers of Family Medicine 

      Liaison Organizations:

• American Academy of Family Physicians
• American Board of Family Medicine
• American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians

• Provide a unified voice for academic family medicine

• Provide a structure for working together more effectively

• Provide a place for outside organizations to come to collaborate

• While providing a unified voice for the discipline, CAFM preserves distinctive voices of current constituencies.

• CAFM’s leadership structure respects the unique governance of each organization while providing ongoing and active opportunities to take action on issues of common priority and interest.

• CAFM collaborates to perform environmental scans and to prioritize issues that would benefit from each organization’s unique contributions.

• CAFM seeks to tackle significant issues confronting academic family medicine and the discipline.

• CAFM is a task-oriented group that engages in advocacy and projects important to the discipline and the stakeholders of academic family medicine. 

CAFM consists of the leadership of the Association of Departments of Family Medicine, the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors, the North American Primary Care Research Group and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (generally, the President, President-elect, Past President, and Executive Director). Whereas individual organizations are the foundation of CAFM, our common commitment is that each of us brings to CAFM a focus on the common good of academic family medicine. CAFM works most effectively on issues of consensus and common priority by engaging the resources and members of each organization to address strategic activities and projects. CAFM also partners with the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Board of Family Medicine to address issues important to the

discipline and the stakeholders of academic family medicine. To enable this partnering, the AAFP and ABFM each have an appointed liaison to CAFM. CAFM holds two face-to-face meetings annually for all CAFM leaders and the AAFP and ABFM liaisons. These meetings are held in conjunction with the meetings where the leadership from family medicine organizations comes together. CAFM calls are held in between the two in-person meetings.

CAFM is designed as a task-oriented group that engages in projects representing strategic academic family medicine initiatives. Each year in January, CAFM prioritizes areas of emphasis and defines projects for the coming year. In preparation for that meeting, each CAFM organization solicits input from their respective leadership so as to inform CAFM’s selection of focal areas. Typically, more than one organization is involved in each project, and projects often draw upon leadership and members of organizations outside of CAFM. In addition to these initiatives prioritized annually, CAFM responds to time-sensitive issues where a unified voice is warranted.

CAFM Staff
Sam Elwood
selwood@adfm.org (pacific time zone)

CAFM Director of Government Relations
Nina DeJonghe

(202) 525.6991 

Ndejonghe@stfm.org

CAFM Chair
Richelle Koopman, MD  

koopmanr@health.missouri.edu