The Purpose of the Puffer/ABFM Fellowship at the NAM is to enable talented, early-career health policy and science scholars in family medicine to participate actively in health- and medicine-related work of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) and to further their careers as future leaders in the field. In considering qualifications for the Puffer/ABFM Fellowship, preference will be given to candidates who have a demonstrated interest in and focus on health quality and health services and have an M.D., Ph.D., or D.O. Supported through an endowment from the American Board of Family Medicine, the program especially welcomes nominations of historically underrepresented candidates.The Puffer/ABFM Fellowship is part of the NAM Fellowships for Health Science Scholars program

Advancing Innovation in Residency Education (FM-AIRE)

Partnering with the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the ABFM and ABFM Foundation sponsor a multi-year learning collaborative examining four-year design features in family medicine residencies that spur innovation in clinical care, advance clinical mastery and competency assessment, while improving the social accountability and clinical responsiveness of family medicine graduate medical education.

The FM AIRE learning collaborative will test promising residency innovations at a scale broader than previous residency redesign pilots in family medicine.  As such, FM AIRE intends to enroll 10% of ACGME-accredited family medicine residency programs with promising educational and care delivery concepts that will shape how future family physicians are prepared for practice.  The ACGME and ABFM have prepared a detailed white paper describing the FM AIRE initiative.  The residency application period is open now.  Interested family medicine residency programs should contact the FM AIRE program manager, Jay Fetter for application support to the FM AIRE application portal.

Strengthening Outcomes and Assessment in Residency

Partnering with the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors (AFMRD), the ABFM Foundation sponsors a family medicine residency community of practice dedicated to GME excellence by aiding residency programs in accessing and utilizing GME outcomes data for residency program self-study and improvement efforts. SOAR builds upon prior AFMRD efforts to support GME excellence and expands on ABFM work to provide residency programs with actionable insights from the National Graduate Survey.

SOAR kicked off development in 2023 and when fully implemented will include (a) freely available GME hub, a web-site to make it easier for programs to access GME outcomes data and prepare the Annual Program Evaluation (APE), (b) a visiting scholars program to study and share new knowledge about what specific structures, curricular programming and care delivery activities lead to desired residency outcomes and (c) an active community of program directors, associate program directors and residency coordinators that will leverage face-to-face and web-based collaborative platforms build and curate new knowledge, reveal bright spots, index areas of interest, and inform new ideas that lead to revised program standards and GME excellence.

In cooperation with the North American Primary Care Group (NAPCRG) the Foundation supports a series of conferences titled Starfield Summits. Dr. Barbara Starfield (1932-2011) a physician and health services researcher, was university distinguished professor and professor of health policy and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. In an effort not only to honor but to advance Dr. Starfield’s legacy, several family medicine organizations created the Starfield Summit. The Summit is envisioned as an ongoing series of meetings providing a unique opportunity for conversation among a diverse group of leaders in primary care research and policy, young and old, intended to galvanize its participants, generate important discussion for public consumption, and enable research and policy agenda-setting in support of primary care function as an essential catalyst in health system reform. It will embrace the principles of Implementation Science, which seeks to promote the integration of research into policy and practice.

Dr. Gayle Stephens (August 6, 1928-February 20, 2014), one of the founders of family medicine in the United States, provided consistent intellectual leadership that profoundly impacted the specialty. He connected history, philosophy, religion, psychiatry, the family, the community, and the sciences to the practice of medicine, and he explained how family medicine was a “counter-culture” within medicine, manifested in personal relationships and rooted in social change. He particularly advanced the importance of relationships in clinical practice and the role of the personal physician as a trusted and trustworthy agent for patients.
The first Keystone conference was held in 1984 with follow on conferences in 1988 and 2000. It was at this point that the ABFM Foundation hosted the most recent conference in 2015.