2023 was an exciting year for the American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM). The College launched several initiatives, including a major new campaign initiative — This is Preventive Medicine — to raise awareness of preventive medicine, introduced new technology and infrastructure system changes to improve operational efficiencies and the member experience, launched new efforts to engage with membership subsets and celebrated leadership in health equity with the Dr. Daniel S. Blumenthal Lecture-Award event and reaction panel. ACPM dedicated itself to growing membership with an enhanced value proposition vetted by the volunteer leadership, new and updated educational and leadership offerings, and extended outreach to further connect with preventive medicine and public health communities.
ACPM launched the This is Preventive Medicine campaign in March at the annual conference to show the world it is time for preventive medicine to lead our health care and public health systems. Working with the member-led Visibility Task Force, ACPM re-doubled efforts to increase public visibility of the specialty and spotlight the impact of preventive medicine physicians on improving health outcomes.
This work led to ACPM members being featured in top-tier national media, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today and others. At time of publication, there have been more than 700 media stories featuring ACPM and preventive medicine physicians on this campaign alone. Efforts to expand the College's visibility also have led to a 5 percent growth in followers across ACPM social media channels, and a 60% increase in engagement over 2022 baseline metrics.
With This is Preventive Medicine resources focused on addressing policymakers, health care executives, residents, medical students and other physicians, ACPM continues to engage our members to be ambassadors for the specialty. Preventive medicine needs a reinforced residency pipeline, stable funding and the opportunity to put preventive medicine physicians’ skills into action – and that starts with ensuring the specialty is top of mind for these essential audiences.
ACPM, in collaboration with the Veterans Administration, launched Military Environmental Exposures Level II Certification in October, building on a successful first year of the program — with more than 1,500 enrolled in the program and nearly 800 awarded certifications. The second level of the Certification includes 10 clinical cases to better prepare physicians and other health care providers to address the unique health needs of America's veterans.
While the public health emergency was declared “over” in May 2023, the Vaccine Confident Campaign initiated in response to the pandemic-era to address public education continues to evolve. The campaign, funded by CDC COVID-19 grant funds, expanded to 100 campaign ambassadors who shared sound, science-based recommendations for vaccination, thereby empowering physicians, educating the public, and combating mis- and dis-information about vaccines. The scope of the campaign expanded beyond promotion of vaccination for COVID-19 to include efforts to increase vaccination rates for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), seasonal flu and routine adult and childhood vaccinations.
Vaccines remain one of the most effective tools in the public health toolbox, and ACPM ambassadors continue to educate the public on the science and importance of vaccination, the safety profile of vaccines, and the best times and places to get vaccinated. Campaign ambassadors have been included in more than 3,550 media articles and placements, reaching more than 690 million people.
Under grant funding by the CDC and together with the American Medical Association and its Center for Health Equity, ACPM awarded 13 physician-led practices to help build capacity within minoritized and marginalized populations to address inequities in mitigation, treatment, and recovery efforts related to COVID-19. Goals accomplished through this pilot project, include:
2023 encompassed grant years 2 and 3 of a five-year cooperative agreement with the CDC Center for HIV and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, designed to amplify the CDC's Let's Stop HIV Together communications campaign. ACPM is focused on activating preventive medicine physicians to help decrease new HIV infections, particularly among minoritized populations. Following a successful all-partner meeting in June, ACPM is turning its focus to developing strategic partnerships to broaden the reach of this campaign. Through HIV Ambassadors and leveraging Prevention Alliance partners, ACPM continues to broaden its reach by providing campaign materials and messages to audiences of HIV patients, those at risk, and other physicians in their network(s).
ACPM also developed and presented a resolution highlighting Prediabetes as a Major Health Concern for Chronic Disease Prevention at the American Medical Association House of Delegates (HOD) Annual Meeting in June. ACPM was able to raise awareness of the physician role in assessing patients and advising them for appropriate lifestyle changes to ensure prediabetes does not advance to full Type 2 Diabetes, ultimately advancing this body of work and filling a gap in the AMA HOD policies. The policy passed and can be accessed here.
Building upon an ACPM-hosted CDC-Training Entity Partner Meeting in fall 2022, ACPM spearheaded key informant interviews of training entity partners to evaluate best practices in delivering the National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) curricula, to strengthen and strategize around the delivery of the program by DPP-trained lifestyle coaches, including standardizing practice and integrating equity-informed content. Developing coaching skills and building resources for physician referrals is an important resource for addressing the growing cases of diabetes and pre-diabetes and is an important adjuvant to patient care and disease mitigation.
Through its outreach and programming, ACPM continues to nurture impactful collaborations with medical and public health partners, including the American Public Health Association and the Alliance for Disease Prevention and Preparedness, the American Medical Association and its Center for Health Equity, the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) and the Association of Medical Specialty Societies to identify best practice models to improve access and quality of care for the acute and chronic challenges facing medicine and public health.
ACPM engaged in significant advocacy and policy work beyond advocating for preventive medicine residency funding. Members of ACPM’s advocacy committee revised, updated and developed policy statements on firearm violence prevention, maternal mortality, reproductive health access, LGBTQ health, diabetes prevention and in-progress statements related the Farm Bill reauthorization and public health implications, artificial intelligence and more. Additionally, ACPM joined partner organizations to advocate for priorities in public health funding, tobacco use prevention, and other aspects of its legislative agenda. ACPM signed on to multiple Briefs of Medical Association Amici, two for the case of Braidwood v. Beccera in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and one for the case of Zurawski v. Texas in the Texas Supreme Court. And, earlier in the year, ACPM joined the Coalition for Trust in Health and Science to join forces with several organizations across the health and healthcare ecosystem to dispel the ongoing and rampant misinformation and dis-information campaigns.
ACPM's members are the heart of the organization. In 2023, nearly 2,000 preventive medicine physicians, residents and medical students counted the College as their professional home. Sustaining strong membership growth, and providing members with the opportunities, resources and support they need is at the core of the College's mission. In 2023 to date, ACPM has implemented new outreach efforts to better attract new members and engage existing members.
ACPM launched a new association management system for members and customers this year. This significant upgrade will simplify access to member resources in addition to streamlining reporting and administrative processes for staff. Members will now have a single, email-based, login for member resources, the member database, CME courses, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the ACPM Career Center and more.
In 2024, the College will continue to develop new opportunities and offerings for its members based on the results of our bi-annual member survey to ensure the value of ACPM membership remains rewarding and continues to grow.
2023 was a year of swimming upstream in turbulent waters, where persistence and preparation paid dividends in setting ACPM up for future advocacy success. With a polarized Congress and the ongoing potential of a government shutdown, long-term continuing funding resolutions and deep cuts to public health programs all remain a concern. In the current FY 2024 House of Representatives funding bill, 28 percent of all public health funding was cut, with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality being zeroed-out, $1.6 billion in cuts to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, $3.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health and many more.
The legislative groundwork done by ACPM advocates helped keep preventive medicine residency funding flat in the fiscal year appropriations. Preventive medicine is positioned to weather what could be a turbulent FY 2024 thanks to the tireless work done by ACPM advocates over the last three years. More than 90 members have participated in meetings with their Congressional representatives and even more continue to participate in training programs, write letters and engage in other advocacy activities supporting preventive medicine. ACPM is preparing for a March on Capitol Hill in conjunction with the 2024 Annual Conference in Washington, DC and we appreciate you putting this on your radar to join in our advocacy efforts.
There is more work to be done. ACPM and preventive medicine do not stand alone in the Nation's public health ecosystem, and the College will continue to work with partners to advocate for critically needed increases in funding for all public health programs and stand against devastating funding cuts.
This year, ACPM piloted new resident engagement, networking and skill-building programs. These early efforts are built to support residents in developing the tangible professional skills they will need throughout their careers and provide them the opportunity to develop a community of preventive medicine colleagues.
Often, preventive medicine residents train in very small cohorts. ACPM's efforts are built around connecting residents across programs to build community and connection that will serve them as they seek to address the greatest challenges in health. Efforts included the second annual new resident orientation and onboarding, residents invited to participate in each of the Committees of the College as well as new virtual social events launched by the Membership Committee, with many more events and opportunities planned for 2024.
More than 500 attendees joined us in New Orleans for Preventive Medicine 2023. This year’s conference, themed Optimizing Prevention, Social Determinants and Science to Maximize Health for All, addressed critical issues facing healthcare today, with an incredible schedule of educational sessions led by leaders across the field. The conference also launched the new campaign — This Is Preventive Medicine — and a corresponding toolkit, to increase awareness of the field in key sectors such as government, hospital administration, medical schools and the public at large. The toolkit empowers preventive medicine physicians to become advocates for the profession. Those who get involved with the campaign learn how to educate select audiences on the need for more training support, greater understanding and awareness of the specialty and an appreciation for the essential skills and training physicians receive in population health and systems.
The 2023 Katherine Boucot Sturgis Lecture was delivered by Dr. Jonathan Fielding, MD, MPH, MA, MBA, Distinguished Professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. During the lecture, he articulated the important role of preventive medicine physicians in reducing morbidity and mortality through research, public policy, clinical care, population health initiatives and public health strategies. He encouraged the College to continue to advance evidence-based science and to be the truth tellers of the best evidence to dispel the misinformation and disinformation rampant in our society. His words echo the action of the College as it engages it several coalitions to ensure evidence-based communications, including the Trust Coalition in Science and Health.
ACPM continued supporting a strong tradition of health equity leadership with the third annual Dr. Daniel S. Blumenthal memorial award and lecture. Each year, a leader in the field of health equity is awarded an opportunity to provide a lecture on the important work of ensuring all people achieve the best possible health and the systemic barriers we need to dismantle to achieve that goal. This year, Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD, Senior Fellow of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse College School of Medicine in addition to numerous other prestigious appointments, received the award and shared illustrative allegories to help physicians and the general public better identify the systemic presence of racism, how it operates and how it negatively impacts health. She then, along with distinguished panelists Neal Kohatsu, MD, MPH, FACPM, Helen Burstin, MD, MPH, MACP, Tochi Iroku-Malize, MD, MPH, MBA, FAAP and facilitator Reed Tuckson, MD, MPH, FACPM, provided practical advice for deconstructing racism in health practice.
The American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM) continues to grow in impact and influence. In 2023, the Journal sustained a high impact factor of 6.6 as it cemented its place as a premier public health journal. ACPM utilized its page allocations and continues to highlight members’ career experiences in the quarterly column, Membership Spotlight.
After launching in 2022 with two issues late in the year, AJPM Focus, the open access journal from ACPM, enjoyed a successful first full year of publication in 2023 and recently was accepted in PubMed Central. The open access journal continued to achieve its aim to democratize access to the best research and science in preventive medicine while highlighting unique and important viewpoints on the most pressing issues in the field.
Continuing medical education (CME) is one of the primary benefits ACPM offers its members. To streamline CME access in 2023, ACPM reorganized the learning management system and now offers several high-value bundles and connects courses in relevant subject areas such as health equity to improve the educational experience. ACPM also developed a new, revised Board Review Course featuring updated study materials to help preventive medicine physicians prepare for taking the board certification exam.
These courses highlighted key areas for practice expansion, improvement, and critical spaces for health care transformation. Additionally, they include opportunities where physicians can work upstream to radically improve the health of their communities.
Leveraging Health Information Technology to Drive Innovation, Improve Population Health, and Advance Health Equity.
Addressing Implicit Bias Among Physicians at the Clinical and System Levels
Aligning Population Health Outcomes with Emerging Payment Models and Delivery System Reform models
Using Clinical Preventive Medicine to Improve Population Health Outcomes in Rural Areas
Centering Equity in Crisis Preparedness and Response in Health Systems: Elevating Emerging Practices in the Care of Minoritized populations
Learning and Using the Policymaking Process to Serve Minoritized Communities
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to exacerbate and bring to light the deep disparities and fissures in our health care system. Preventive medicine physicians have the skills and knowledge to help heal these divides and rectify the structural barriers that created them.
Looking back, 2023 was a year focused on capacity building and fortifying our infrastructure following a turbulent time through the pandemic. A new association management system to increase operational efficiencies, a new visibility campaign to highlight the importance of the specialty, and a new resident engagement program to strengthen the pipeline, all help to solidify the foundation of the College and the work ahead to continue to amplify ACPM and preventive medicine physicians as leaders in medicine and public health.
In 2024, ACPM will build on these efforts and strengthen the resolve of preventive medicine. The College will institute a new leadership curriculum for young physicians - providing them with the skills and connections they need to establish themselves as health care and public health leaders. ACPM will host a march on Capitol Hill at Preventive Medicine 2024, to meet with Congress and educate them on why the time to invest in public health and preventive medicine is now. ACPM will continue to expand partnerships with medical student organizations to ensure the future of medicine is aware of the incredible opportunities available to them in prevention.
Thank you to everyone who has supported ACPM this past year – progress does not happen without your help, and the College will continue to rely on you to advance the mission to transform our healthcare and public health systems and secure optimal health and well-being for all.
