Last week I engaged in a discussion with members of the Visibility Task Force about our This is Preventive Medicine campaign and they requested another push to our membership about what it is, why it is important and what resources are available to all members. Well, here is that push. The This is Preventive Medicine campaign launched at the ACPM Annual Conference in New Orleans this past March with a video and toolkit full of resources for all ACPM members to use to amplify their own messages as part of an overall campaign as to what preventive medicine is and why it matters.
Specifically, the resources are geared towards four key audiences: 1) medical students and residents to raise awareness about the field to entice and encourage students and residents to learn more about the specialty and to apply for residency training; 2) hospitals, health systems and health departments to engage them on the competencies found in the specialty and to consider preventive medicine trained physicians for their population health positions and other leadership positions that would benefit from the skills, knowledge and training of preventive medicine physicians; 3) elected officials who are sitting in seats of power to support financial requests to fund residency training programs of preventive medicine physicians given the growth of interest in the field since the pandemic and the desire to fund all approved residency slots and to diversify the face of physicians to more accurately reflect the populations served; and 4) other medical specialties to avoid duplication of efforts to expand or enhance their own fields with competencies found in Preventive Medicine (e.g., public health, population health and the social determinants of health) and to better understand what gaps preventive medicine physicians fill across the health and healthcare ecosystem.
The resources for the campaign are found on our website here and can be used by any member or trained preventive medicine physician to amplify the field based on their own unique contributions and roles served. There are articles and social media posts from which to select depending upon your unique style and interest. If you are interested in officially becoming an ACPM Ambassador and having support to refine your messages and to position yourself in your own community, please email membership@acpm.org. Please note, we did not develop materials for the consumer market or any other market other than those above given limited resources and an imperative to focus on these four audiences first as a means for raising awareness to ensure a pipeline as well as jobs for that early pipeline of trained and graduating physicians.
So, please lend your name, LinkedIn profile or other social media efforts to the campaign and let others know about your skills, expertise and why you believe preventive medicine is a specialty worthy of being amplified and made known. The more noise each of you make to advance the awareness of the field, the better off every preventive medicine trained physician will be.
Thank you in advance for engaging on this important campaign,
Donna
Donna Grande, MGA
ACPM CEO