Board members of the Missouri Academy of Family Physicians want to make sure that the needs of its members are being met.  About every three years, a strategic planning meeting is held to make sure the Academy is meeting the goals it has outlined or to make adjustments to meet new challenges that medicine may be facing.  This past August, the board met at Lodge at Old Kinderhook, at Camdenton, for its most recent strategic planning meeting.  Greg Meissen, PhD, was the facilitator of this meeting.   With his help and leadership, I believe we had one of our most productive strategic planning meetings in the past 10 years.

As with past meetings, we focused on developing a Vision Statement, reviewed our Mission, and identifying strategies to guide the Academy in the next three years.

Our VISION statement:  Every Missourian has a family physician.

Our MISSION:   The Missouri Academy of Family Physicians is dedicated to optimizing the health of the patients, families, and communities of Missouri by supporting family physicians in providing patient care, advocacy, education and research.

The STRATEGIES that were chosen to guide the Missouri Academy of Family Physicians in the near future are Advocacy, Public Awareness about Family Physicians, and Pipeline for Family Physicians.

Advocacy has been a strong point that the MAFP has focused on in the past.   The Academy has been there to make sure that the voices of our members and our patients have been heard at the state legislature.    Over the next few years, the Board would like to work on developing strategies to strengthen our PAC.  The Board has had a goal of 100% participation by board members in contributing to the PAC.   We have been experimenting with new strategies to improve participation of our members.  For example, this year at our Annual Fall Conference, we initiated a text to donate and were able to raise over $2,000.

In addition, the Advocacy Commission and our lobbyists will be working two specific issues:   Preceptor Tax Incentive (in 2020) and the Primary Care Spend.  Along with our lobbyists, the MAFP will stay apprized of issues occurring at the legislature to be prepared for evolving bills.   The Advocacy Commission will be developing strategies to be more proactive in developing initiatives on issues of importance.  This will allow us to take an offensive position on issues and initiatives that are important to the MAFP.

The MAFP would like to bring a new public awareness to our specialty.    To accomplish this, The Executive Commission will be researching ad agencies and determining feasibility of an ad campaign.   We would like to build a new commission or sub-committee to communicate and work with other family physician groups in Missouri, especially the osteopathic groups.  The board would also like to expand our website for public and non-member section of the MAFP website.   By working with an ad agency and webpage consultant, we could consider creating a “Ask a Family Doc?” (Question and Answer interactive section to our webpage) and/or Find a Family Physician.    This would add an interactive portion to our web page to communicate directly with those interested in what we offer. This commission would also continue to improve and add to our Twitter and Facebook pages.

The board would like to present and have a presence the next year at the Heartland Conference-High School Career Day.   The new commission would also evaluate developing printed material for waiting rooms and conferences for family physicians.   We would like to consider developing TED talks in the next couple of years.

The final strategy the MAFP would like to work on is developing a Pipeline for family physicians.   Missouri Academy of Family Physicians has been committed to encouraging primary care in Missouri.  Just recently in November, we committed to increasing the number of externships from 4 to 6.  The Education Commission will be working on developing a set of standard materials and PowerPoint presentations to allow talks to be done more efficiently.   We would like to reach out to all of our medical schools with a series of talks.   In the next couple of years, we would like to develop a strategy to communicate with physicians in other states.   In addition, we would also like to reach out to students in college, high schools and middle school that maybe considering medicine as a career.

The MAFP has not taken advantage of grant money that may be available in the recent years.   In the next year, the MAFP would like to develop a list of background materials and possible funders.  This year, we would like to write our first grant that could also be a “model” proposal.   A mini grant might be used to support a student coalition/group development at medical schools.

These are some of the things that the MAFP will be working on in the next couple of years.   I believe the Board is working hard to press forward keeping with and meeting the goals of our Mission.  Look for more information on the MAFP strategic plan in the January-March, 2019 issue of the Missouri Family Physician.