Click below to learn about the 5 areas of ABFM research
Publications Library
Since the founding of American Board of Family Practice (ABFP) in 1969, there have been major advances in the cognitive sciences of learning, memory retention, and problem solving. How should these insights shape knowledge assessment in ABFM's Board certification portfolio? To help answer this question, ABFM, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) commissioned an independent review of the relevant literature related to Board Certification, providing support with a commitment to relinquish any editorial control.
BACKGROUND: While barriers to care for pregnant patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) have been described, the experiences and challenges of the physicians providing care to these patients are poorly understood. OBJECTIVES: To describe the experiences of family physicians providing comprehensive care to pregnant people with OUD and the challenges they face in providing such care.
In January 2021, the Board of Directors of the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) decided that emerging priorities in health and health care should become an explicit component of knowledge assessment in the future. ABFM examinations and self-assessment activities are comprised of a balance of items representing the competencies within family medicine. The composition of these self-assessments and the examinations is guided by a “blueprint” that reflects current knowledge expected of every family physician regarding diagnosis and treatment in daily practice.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study is to examine diabetes screening and monitoring among Latino individuals as compared with non-Latino White individuals and to better understand how we can use neighborhood data to address diabetes care inequities. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: This is a retrospective observational study linked with neighborhood-level Latino subgroup data obtained from the American Community Survey.
BACKGROUND: Disease prevention is a central aspect of primary care practice and is comprised of primary (eg, vaccinations), secondary (eg, screenings), tertiary (eg, chronic condition monitoring), and quaternary (eg, prevention of overmedicalization) levels. Despite rapid digital transformation of primary care practices, digital health interventions (DHIs) in preventive care have yet to be systematically evaluated. OBJECTIVE: This review aimed to identify and describe the scope and use of current DHIs for preventive care in primary care settings.
Background: Rural US populations face a chronic shortage of physicians and an increasing gap in life expectancy compared to urban US populations, creating a need to understand how to increase residency graduates' desire to practice in such areas. Objective: This study quantifies associations between the amount of rural training during family medicine (FM) residencies and subsequent rural work.
Female physicians earn less than their male counterparts, and many explanatory factors have been offered to account for these differences. An analysis of the 2019 American Board of Family Medicine New Graduate Survey Data demonstrates that women make 16% less than men, regardless of experience or hours worked.
The proportion of family physicians reporting provision of patient care in Spanish changed little between 2013 to 2020 but rose substantially for care delivered in other non-English languages. Physician-patient language concordance is associated with better clinical outcomes and higher patient satisfaction, serves as a proxy indicator for workforce diversity, and should be monitored and encouraged as the US population continues to diversify.
As health systems grow in number and complexity, so do their associated leadership roles. And this growing array of opportunities to direct increasingly intricate clinical practice groups, public health systems, academic departments, research enterprises and policy begs for generalists trained to first diagnose problems faced before seeking and applying solutions. Breadth of training and the variety of experience begets competency in facing the unknown and undifferentiated and is the wellspring of innovation.
Earlier this year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) published the first formal consensus study of primary care in 25 years. The consensus committee’s report, “Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care,” built on the 1996 Institute of Medicine primary care report. Since the report’s launch on May 4, 2021, there have been several efforts to elevate its recommendations as well as some recent breakthroughs in supporting them.
Clinical knowledge is fundamental to the social contract between medicine and society. As 1 of the 6 core competencies, appropriate clinical knowledge is effortfully acquired, constantly updated through practice and learning, and regularly assessed independently through board certification—and patients care a lot about it. It is thus important for ABFM to regularly review the validity of ABFM high-stakes knowledge assessments.
BACKGROUND: The physician gender wage gap may be due, in part, to productivity-based compensation models that undervalue female practice patterns. OBJECTIVE: To determine how primary care physician (PCP) compensation by gender differs when applying existing productivity-based and alternative compensation models. DESIGN: Microsimulation. SETTING: 2016 to 2019 national clinical registry of 1222 primary care practices. PARTICIPANTS: Male and female PCPs matched on specialty, years since medical school graduation, practice site, and sessions worked.
BACKGROUND: The physician gender wage gap may be due, in part, to productivity-based compensation models that undervalue female practice patterns.
OBJECTIVE: To determine how primary care physician (PCP) compensation by gender differs when applying existing productivity-based and alternative compensation models.
BACKGROUND: Patient-centered care is the best practice in the care of pregnant and postpartum patients. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted changes in perinatal care policies, which were often reactive, resulting in unintended consequences, many of which made the delivery of patient-centered care more difficult. This study aimed to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on perinatal health care delivery from the perspective of family physicians in the United States. METHODS: From October 5 to November 4, 2020, we surveyed mid- to late-career family physicians who provide perinatal care.
In May 2021, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care. Linking coordination of primary care to national health priorities was key to the launch of the Initiative to Strengthen Primary Health Care, which is designing a plan for a federal office or council for primary care. In this issue of Annals, 2 articles link the NASEM report to the national priority of health equity. A third article addresses the critical neglect of funding for primary care research.
Recent events remind us that deeply embedded inequities in health care access and health outcomes are rooted in historically white, and male, systems of power. A new series of JABFM policy briefs and accompanying commentaries will apply a critical perspective to topics of equity and diversity in the primary care workforce, and support a more inclusive and diverse array of collaborators and authors.
The graduate medical education (GME) system is heavily subsidized by the public in return for producing physicians who meet society's needs. Under the terms of this implicit social contract, decisions about how this funding is allocated are deferred to the individual training sites. Institutions receiving public funding face potential conflicts of interest, which have at times prioritized institutional purposes and needs over societal needs, highlighting that there is little public accountability for how such funding is used.
Objective: To learn from primary health care experts' experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic across countries. Methods: We applied qualitative thematic analysis to open-text responses from a multinational rapid response survey of primary health care experts assessing response to the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
OBJECTIVE: To compare physician versus practice-level primary care continuity and their association with expenditure and acute care utilization among Medicare beneficiaries and evaluate if continuity of outpatient primary care at either/both physician or/and practice level could be useful quality measures. DATA SOURCE: Medicare Fee-For-Service claims data for community dwelling beneficiaries without End-Stage Renal Disease who were attributed to a national random sample of primary care practices billing Medicare (2011-2017).
