President’s Message Connolly Brings Commitment to DEI as CAFP President Shannon Connolly, MD

president’s message

Shannon Connolly, MD

Connolly Brings Commitment to DEI as CAFP President

Excerpted from President’s speech delivered during the 2021 All Member Advocacy Meeting

It has almost become a trope to say that this last year has been extraordinary. For me, responding to the needs of my patients during the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly been the greatest challenge thus far in my career, as I’m sure it has been for many of you. But out of 2020, came some amazing things--even more amazing than the Tiger King, and our newfound sourdough bread baking skills.

This year, family physicians demonstrated that we are the very best of what medicine has to offer. It takes operational brilliance to launch a telehealth program overnight or to build a fully functioning emergency department in a parking lot. It takes bravery to oversee a SNF while a deadly virus runs rampant. It takes an uncommon amount of stick-to-it-iveness to figure out what on earth is happening with a third-party administrator so you can just get vaccines into people's arms. It takes tremendous emotional resilience to sit at the bedside of a dying patient in the wee hours of the morning when others are sleeping because you know that if you don’t sit there, that person will die alone. It takes a lot a Band-Aids over the bridge of your nose to protect it from the bruising and abrasions that happen from wearing PPE for 16-, 18-, or 24-hour shifts. You all gave everything in the service of your patients this year.

I am deeply humbled that you have entrusted me with the role of President of the CAFP. The people within this organization have sustained me throughout my career, in times where I have succeeded, in times when I have experienced empathy fatigue and started feeling angry towards my patients for the very circumstances that led them to my care, and in times when I swore that whatever administrator I was trying to convince had some personal vendetta against me, and wasn’t just an imperfect person trying to do her best in an perversely incentivized, imperfect system.

As your president, I will do my best to represent you and the field of family medicine well. As I think about our future, I must acknowledge that we are in the midst of a national reckoning about racism. What we do will define how we are judged by future generations. We are at a point where change is possible if we are brave enough to take it on as the work of family medicine. navigate difficult journeys that others would not attempt. Family doctors have always uplifted the voices of those who have been overlooked and provided the services that people need to maintain their dignity. Family doctors work in prisons and jails, in immigration detention facilities, in substance use disorder treatment centers, in regional centers, abortion clinics, hospices, in gender affirming care clinics, on street outreach teams, in violence prevention programs, and so many other places. We are intuitively drawn to the places that have the most injustice because that’s where we know our work begins.

But if we are going to truly make a difference, it is insufficient to simply agree that inequity is bad. The difference between being effective and ineffective in moving the needle is application of rigorous methodology to the work that we do. We must collect data and measure the effects of our efforts with patient-oriented outcomes. As scientists, we must measure what we treasure.

We all know the statistics about Black maternal mortality. We know that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected people who are indigenous and Latinx. We know that the largest mental health institution in the world is the LA County jail because our society chooses to incarcerate people rather than acknowledge that they are unwell. We know that there are unaccompanied minors— toddlers, currently held in a convention center in Long Beach because our government doesn’t quite know what to do with them. This knowledge is our call to action. We must center this work, we must name it as our work, and we must define our success by how well we do this work.

This fall, your board of directors will develop the strategic plan for the next few years. As always, our strategic plan will encompass all the areas that are important to our profession-- like payment reform, workforce development, medical education, and legislative advocacy. My commitment to you is that as we do this work, we will look through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion. When we are done, our strategic plan will reflect not only the future direction of the profession of family medicine, but also that the CAFP is a national thought leader in advancing health equity.

While this year was extraordinary in what family medicine achieved, I believe our best work is yet to come. As we emerge from this pandemic, I look forward to doing this work together, as only family doctors can do.