A Tool for Advocacy: How the Family Medicine Factbook Affected Change at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences

The Family Medicine Factbook (Factbook) is a digital resource full of analysis and statistics surrounding the specialty of family medicine. Published by the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) and the Center for Professionalism & Value in Health Care (CPV), the Factbook provides a broad perspective by exploring data such as family physician distribution, pay gaps, scope of practice, and much more. This data can be used to identify areas where family medicine may be improved through policy and advocacy efforts.

ABFM Board Chair and Assistant Chief of the Division of Family Medicine at George Washington University (GWU) Andrea Anderson, MD, MEd, recently put the Factbook to use as part of a broader campaign to increase the availability of family medicine education at the university.

“George Washington had no family medicine faculty and no family medicine option for students. It is considered one of the target schools, or medical school without FM departments,” Dr. Anderson explained. “Before I came to GWU, students who were interested in family medicine used to rotate through a local Community Health Center network where I worked and directed their rotations as a community adjunct professor.”

Dr. Anderson, ABFM Board Certified since 2003, knew that her university was deficient in education related to the specialty, so she motivated students who were interested in pursuing family medicine to speak their mind.

“Throughout the years, I and other faculty, definitely encouraged students to express how they were feeling about the lack of family medicine exposure at their school,” she said. “Over the years, the [students] signed petitions, met with deans, and did various other things to increase the focus on family medicine.”

In 2019, a division of family medicine was developed within GWU’s Emergency Medicine Department as a kind of incubation for a new department. “We now have five family medicine faculty [on staff] and an ABFM-sponsored health policy fellowship with plans to become a department either this year or next,” she said excitedly.

When the Factbook was published, Dr. Anderson recognized that its concise analysis of the specialty could be a benefit to the ongoing campaign for family medicine exposure within her own facility. In fact, one of GWU’s health policy fellows at the time, Dr. Emmeline Ha, is now an attending GWU physician, a past CPV fellow, and a leading author of the Factbook.

“You have a resource that’s really geared towards everyone. Anybody could pick up the Factbook, a family medicine leader, a patient, or a policymaker,” Dr. Ha explained. “The Factbook helps our advocacy, and it also assists our proposals and research initiatives within academic institutions.”

Dr. Ha attended GWU as a medical student and used Dr. Anderson as a resource to learn about the specialty of family medicine.  “Through word of mouth, I found Dr. Anderson, who was a great advocate for the specialty in our community of Washington, DC. That was so fortunate because there was no faculty, no clinical experiences, and no great understanding of what family medicine physicians do at my school.”

Just a few years after she graduated and completed her FM residency in California, Dr. Ha would return to GWU and work side-by-side with her mentor, Dr. Anderson. Now they are able to advocate for family medicine in a collaborative space. The Factbook, which Dr. Ha helped write, is an important tool to keep at hand.

Dr. Anderson explained that GWU is currently building a new hospital in Ward Seven of Washington, DC, an area with significant health disparities. The dean of GWU has committed to a family medicine residency within that hospital upon its completion.

“In making the case [for this family medicine residency program], there was a lot of education that needed to be done. A lot of people, though they may be around family physicians, don’t see the breadth of [the specialty],” Dr. Anderson said. “The Factbook really helps me as an advocate to have a variety of current and useful facts about family medicine’s impact. It’s a nice way to synthesize all the data.”

Although family medicine is the second largest specialty in the United States, there are still pockets within the medical community that don’t appreciate how essential family physicians are to general health care. The Factbook is available to all family physicians as a tool to help contextualize and advocate on behalf of the specialty.

“I’m going to start giving it to all the students who rotate through our clinic,” said Dr. Anderson, “because it’s important for them to know about family medicine, even if they become a vascular surgeon, for example. A lot of times our emphasis is to increase the number of students going into family medicine, which I’m definitely all for. But we need to increase awareness too, right?”

Thank you to Dr. Andrea Anderson and Dr. Emmeline Ha for sharing their inspiring story. We look forward to seeing the progress to come at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Aaron Burch serves as Editorial Content Manager for the American Board of Family Medicine. He has been writing professionally in the health care field since 2014.