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    CFAS Rep Bulletin June/July 2024

    In this edition:

    • Message from the Chair
    • CFAS Administrative Board Holds In-Person Meeting and Retreat
    • Registration Opens for Learn Serve Lead 2024: The AAMC Annual Meeting
    • Relaunching the CFAS Demographic Survey
    • Update on the CFAS Faculty as Medical Educators Committee
    • CFAS Connects Spring Roundup and Upcoming August 14 CFAS Connects
    • CFAS Rep Profile: Shawn Wilson, PhD, MA

    Message from the Chair 

    Dear CFAS Colleagues, 

    Here we are in the middle of summer already, wrapping up remaining work that may have lingered after the end of the academic year and looking forward to a group of new residents, trainees, and students arriving a bit later in the summer. I hope most of you, however, are planning time off in the coming weeks for personal renewal and fun with family and friends, whether on a trip away from home, gardening in your back yard, reading a good book, taking a hike in the woods, or doing whatever brings you satisfaction and joy. I know firsthand that faculty in academic medicine are among the hardest working people in the country, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to get away for at least a little while to relax, reflect, and renew so you return prepared for the next set of challenges. 

    On June 10, before summer temperatures ramped up, the CFAS Administrative Board convened in Washington, DC, at the AAMC for a full-day retreat focused on the future direction of CFAS. As CFAS chair, I am acutely aware that my role is not merely to keep the organization successful during the two years I serve, but to do everything in my power to ensure we’re ready for the future and responsive to whatever new challenges faculty are facing in academic medicine. I want to leave my role as chair in 2025 with the organization stronger and better situated for ongoing, future success. 

    Our goal of improving the landscape for academic medicine faculty on a national level is critical, and I am committed to ensure we are doing whatever we can to achieve that enormous mission – both in my role as CFAS chair and as an AAMC Board of Directors member. With that in mind, I wanted to focus the considerable talents of our 15-member CFAS Administrative Board on the future of CFAS: creating both near-term and long-term goals and establishing a roadmap and clear strategies to achieve them. To that end, we partnered with AAMC Chief of Staff Jennifer Schlener to facilitate a strategic and tactical administrative board retreat. Here are some of my key takeaways from the retreat: 

    • Feedback Integration: We received extraordinary feedback from you during the CFAS spring meeting that provided the content anchor for several hours of prioritizing and developing strategies. 
    • Collaboration: We determined that key to our success isn’t merely addressing critical topics for faculty, such as time, well-being, and burnout, value of faculty, and funds flow, but doing it collaboratively with other critical players, including health system leaders in the newly named Council of Academic Health System Executives (CAHSE) and deans in the AAMC’s Council of Deans (COD). Collaboration emerged as the most talked-about element of achieving success within CFAS and in advancing faculty value. 
    • Mixers: Our collaborative nature was recently demonstrated with our most recent CFAS Connects event, jointly held with the AAMC’s Group on Faculty Affairs (GFA) in late June. Notably, GFA Chair Lisa Cain, PhD, was included in our retreat and contributed significantly to the work.

    As we think critically about how to put these ideas into practice, we expect to inject elements of faculty value and collaboration into our CFAS committee work, our meeting programs, and our overall activity. I am, as always, eager to hear your perspectives and ideas related to collaborative opportunities and the advancement of faculty value. I hope you reach out to me directly and also express your views in upcoming committee meetings or at Learn Serve Lead in November so we can keep the progress moving. I am excited to continue the journey with all of you and look forward to your contributions. 

    Nita Ahuja, MD
    CFAS Chair 
    Yale School of Medicine 

    CFAS Administrative Board Holds In-Person Meeting and Retreat

    On June 10, the CFAS Administrative Board met at the AAMC headquarters in Washington for a daylong administrative board meeting and retreat, followed by the AAMC Board of Directors’ meeting, which includes CFAS Chair Nita Ahuja, MD, and CFAS Chair-elect Arthur R. Derse, MD, JD. 

    While the CFAS Ad Board meets in person at the Learn Serve Lead Annual Meeting and the CFAS Spring Meeting, and additionally holds monthly Zoom calls, this retreat provided CFAS leadership an opportunity to convene for several hours to explore an array of issues related to CFAS strategy, priorities, and future planning in depth. 

    In addition to the full CFAS Administrative Board, which includes Lisa Cain, PhD, in her role as chair of the AAMC’s Group on Faculty Affairs, Catherine Coe, MD, of the UNC School of Medicine, was also invited to attend as the junior faculty member of the AAMC Board of Directors. While Dr. Coe is not a CFAS rep, the process of her appointment to the AAMC Board of Directors was developed and executed by CFAS leadership and the CFAS Nominating Committee. 

    The first part of the meeting explored how CFAS committees are organized and function. Most CFAS committees are open to any rep who wishes to be engaged in the work – a structure that allows CFAS reps to investigate issues relevant to faculty based on individual interests and experiences. To better align the work of the committees, the CFAS Ad Board is creating a system where committee chairs develop annual goals for their work and coordinate and prioritize with other committee leaders to ensure alignment, shared purpose, and resource and knowledge sharing among all the committees. 

    AAMC President and CEO David Skorton, MD, also joined the meeting to provide an overview of AAMC priorities, an update on policy challenges faced in our community, including research funding, DEI legislation, and the uncertainty posed by upcoming elections, and he also shared his perspective on the state of the faculty. Dr. Skorton continues to support the notion that faculty should remain actively engaged in the governance structures of their academic health centers and work individually and collectively as partners in finding solutions to the challenges academic medicine faces. 

    AAMC Chief of Staff Jennifer Schlener then presided over a 4-hour retreat to explore topics that many of you – active and engaged CFAS representatives – raised during the joint CFAS-GRA-ORR Spring Meeting in April. Those of you who attended the meeting may recall the polling questions during the CFAS Business Meeting about pain points faculty in academic medicine experience, as well as a “magic wand” question that attempted to define how we might improve the faculty experience. Data from that exercise, as well as input the CFAS team received from AAMC member societies that make up CFAS, helped define the core content and topics CFAS should address, including: 

    • Time – needing more value attached to non-clinical missions, protected time needed for research and education.
    • Funding – limited resources, budget transparency, grants, compensation, financial challenges and needs, medical school vs. academic health center.
    • Culture – lack of feeling valued, too much emphasis on clinical revenue generating activities, misaligned incentives, RVU, lack of recognition for non-clinical work, need for compassion, respect, and strengthening a sense of belonging with the institution, restoring joy in practice, challenges related to burnout and turnover.
    • Tailored Leadership – evolving new requirements for leaders in academic medicine, need for further skill development for faculty to empower them to be considered for future leadership positions.
    • Externalities – politics (both internal and external).

    Some of the feedback received from member society executives was especially interesting, with a focus on better understanding and supporting human capital in academic medicine and requests to partner with societies on topics such as career pathways, faculty satisfaction across specialties and disciplines, and better faculty retention. With those topical themes in mind, the primary goals of the retreat included: 

    • Defining what “CFAS impact” means.
    • Reaching consensus on the top 5 pain points of faculty and/or issues that are imperative for CFAS to contribute/address (in alignment with AAMC’s strategic plan and prioritization efforts), realizing that the faculty environment is constantly evolving based on forces affecting the broader academic medicine community.
    • Identifying specific, actionable ways in which the CFAS Administrative Board can engage with the Council of Deans and the newly chartered Council of Academic Health System Executives to positively contribute to conversations and work that aligns with the AAMC’s strategic plan, and be responsive to the many headwinds facing the AAMC and academic medicine broadly.
    • Beginning to identify key priorities for the next one to three years.

    CFAS leaders are still compiling and refining the key subjects and activities that will emerge from that framework, but topics such as addressing time allocation, better understanding and boosting faculty retention, improving faculty well-being, and most of all, recognizing and defining the value of faculty in academic medicine emerged as fundamental focus areas for the future of CFAS work over the next three years. 

    Critical to the success of addressing these issues will be collaboration across different AAMC affinity groups, including our council peers in the AAMC Council of Deans and the Council of Academic Health System Executives, and also many of the other professional development groups at the AAMC where several CFAS reps already have relationship and where there is ongoing work relevant to faculty advancement. In its work, the CFAS Ad Board committed to the notion that potential projects, programming ideas, and future resource development must address how the AAMC generally and the CFAS constituency specifically, can continue to evolve to represent the ever-evolving interests and needs of faculty. The world in which faculty exists is changing as challenges shift and expand, and CFAS must be responsive in real time to those changes. 

    The CFAS Business Meeting at the 2024 Learn Serve Lead AAMC Annual Meeting in Atlanta, will focus on additional details of the findings, along with specific ideas on how we can move forward to improve the state of faculty in the nation.

    Registration Opens for Learn Serve Lead 2024: The AAMC Annual Meeting

    Registration is open for the AAMC’s premier professional development event, Learn Serve Lead 2024: The AAMC Annual Meeting. This year, LSL will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, from Nov. 8-12, at the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC). CFAS is well-represented at LSL, thanks to topics that are featured in the meeting’s programming, with sessions touching on a wide variety of issues that are important to both faculty members and academic societies. 

    In addition, CFAS programming fills much of the first day (Friday) of the meeting with committee meetings, a joint AAMC councils meeting, and our business meeting. Please arrange your schedule to participate in the Friday activity! In addition, there’s a knowledge sharing session and joint reception later in the event, and a full array of breakout sessions and other programming elements relevant to faculty throughout the conference. 

    This year’s plenary speakers include:

    • Award-winning 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley
    • James N. Weinstein, DO, MS, senior vice president of Microsoft Health, the Peggy Y. Thomson Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth and former CEO and president of Dartmouth Health
    • AAMC Board of Directors Chair Lee Jones, MD, and AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD
    • David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, national bestselling author of Chasing My Cure and co-founder and executive director of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network

    CFAS reps and other faculty will be featured panelists at several breakout sessions.

    Relaunching the CFAS Demographic Survey

    One of the major goals of the CFAS DEI Committee is ensuring that the council itself is as representative and inclusive as possible. To that end, the committee has revitalized and expanded a 2018 survey that captured the demographic makeup of the council. The committee’s aim with relaunching this survey is to collect data to measure the representation within the council in order to set a benchmark for future progress and to hold CFAS accountable for continuing to diversify its ranks. 

    Access the survey here: https://surveys.aamc.org/se/7C7E87CB3E9F293D

    The survey is now open and accessible to any CFAS rep who wishes to participate and we encourage everybody in CFAS to make sure their voices are heard and their backgrounds are represented! Other goals of the survey include the following:

    • Characterize the diversity of social identities represented among current CFAS representatives. 
    • Identify effective strategies for increasing individual engagement across CFAS membership in future activities.
    • Expand upon prior data collection to include LGBTQIA+ engagement within CFAS.
    • Identify thematic interests of CFAS representatives, particularly in areas related to DEI issues, training, and awareness.

    AAMC and CFAS leadership will receive a report providing an analysis of survey responses. This will help inform the initiatives of the DEI committee and CFAS Leadership over the next three years, including program development, membership outreach, growth and engagement, resource allocation and member support.

    The survey is voluntary and should take a maximum of 10 minutes to complete. You can decline to answer any question or withdraw your participation at any point of the survey. Your responses are confidential. No release with identification will occur, except with permission from you. There will be no personal data attributed to an individual for purposes of reporting or research. The AAMC will securely store responses and include access controls that limit exposure to those with a need to know. They will also assign data management to the designated Data Steward at the AAMC.

    For questions about the survey or your participation, please reach out to Alex Bolt at abolt@aamc.org.

    Update on the CFAS Faculty as Medical Educators Committee

    The CFAS Faculty as Medical Educators Committee (FAME) is preparing to host a series of virtual focus groups in late July and early August to hear from CFAS reps about how faculty educators are spending their time, an issue which has been highlighted as a critical piece in understanding the roles and responsibilities of medical educators. We welcome any CFAS rep to volunteer to participate to help the AAMC get a better understanding of how the faculty who are teaching and educating the next generation of clinicians and researchers are supported in their careers and activities. Specifically, we hope to get insight into:

    • The various tasks and responsibilities undertaken by medical educators on a daily basis, both within and outside of the time allotted for these activities per their faculty appointment.
    • Common challenges and competing responsibilities for medical educators in their roles.
    • How medical educator activities are measured and acknowledged.

    We are dividing the focus groups into three cohorts based on academic role: clinical educators; biomedical educators; department chairs/division chiefs/administrators. Please sign-up for the group you identify most closely with. There will be capacity to include up to 12 CFAS reps in each focus group and we are providing two different time options to provide people with flexibility.

    Please click any link below to sign up. We thank you in advance for your participation.

    CFAS Connects Spring Roundup and Upcoming August 14 CFAS Connects

    Thank you to all who have gathered for the monthly CFAS Connects forums to explore broad topics of interest to faculty in academic medicine. CFAS Connects will take a summer break in July, but returns Aug. 14 from 3-4 p.m., ET, for “The History of CFAS and Why Your Role as a Rep Matters.” Longstanding CFAS representatives and administrative board members will provide background about the council and the role each of you serve as representatives. CFAS leadership will also update members about the goals and direction of CFAS while sharing takeaways from the CFAS Administrative Board’s June retreat. Registration is required and you may do so by clicking the link above.

    The August discussion follows a June CFAS Connects, CFAS/GFA: Better Together – Joint Session to Explore Areas of Interest and Opportunities for Collaboration, in collaboration with the Group on Faculty Affairs (GFA). Following a brief introduction, CFAS and GFA members were randomly assigned to breakout rooms to discuss the following questions:

    1. What can faculty at your institution do to manage time pressure between clinical and research duties and teaching/education?
    2. How do we uphold the values of academic medicine while continuously defining the roles and responsibilities of faculty members?
    3. What challenges do faculty face regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how do these challenges impact their well-being and motivation to work?
    4. What are your future concerns about the funding and cultural environment in light of shared governance within your institution and mergers and acquisitions?

    To view the recording, which includes each breakout room facilitator reporting out a summary of their group’s discussion, click the link above (please note you will need to register for the session to view the recording). Thank you to CFAS reps Lily Belfi, MD, Lee Eisner, PhD, Neil Osheroff, PhD, Mithu Sen, MD, and Valencia Walker, MD, MPH, who volunteered to serve as breakout room facilitators.

    In May, CFAS Connects featured AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD, for a town hall with the CFAS community. He reminded CFAS reps of his longtime faculty connection, emphasizing his appreciation for the faculty perspective and the value of establishing formal mechanisms to elevate the faculty voice in academic medicine. 

    Thank you to the members of the CFAS Program Committee, under the leadership of committee chair and CFAS Chair-elect Arthur Derse, MD, JD, for making key contributions to the planning of the monthly CFAS Connects programs.

    CFAS Rep Profile: Shawn Wilson, PhD, MA 

    Faculty Director of Academic Career Support and Advising, Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine
     
    CFAS: Please tell us about your work in faculty development and coaching.
     
    Dr. Wilson: My background is in education and student affairs and my master’s and PhD are in those areas. 

    I started my career in undergraduate student housing and then as an ombudsperson at Indiana University. I helped students navigate complex personal or academic issues. I also helped faculty members understand where students were coming from and what resources existed for them. In 2015, I moved to academic medicine as the Director of Faculty Development at Indiana University School of Medicine. I wanted to make that change because when you work with students, you impact them one at a time, but when you work with faculty, you can create institutional and systemic change. I love faculty development because our work with faculty has ripple effects across many more students than I could reach alone. 

    For the last three years, I have served as the Vice Chair for Faculty Development and Diversity in the otolaryngology and pediatrics departments at Indiana University School of Medicine. Earlier this year I moved to Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine and I’m back in the dean’s office working in faculty development and academic career support. 

    CFAS: What are your thoughts on how academic medicine can support institutional DEI staff during this difficult time?

    Dr. Wilson: In 2015, DEI was not seriously talked about in academic medicine, but many institutions, societies, and leaders are now much more invested in it. Right now, it’s critical right that institutional leaders take the next step and provide protected time and financial support– meaning a budget – to DEI leaders. Too often we see someone appointed to a role and given a title with little to no protected time and they don’t have administrative support or a budget. These resources are crucial because there are still a lot of hurdles and red tape in academic medicine, especially when it comes to diversity and inclusion work. 

    It is critical to have support from your leaders. I would often spend weeks trying to get buy in on why we should embed DEI across our organization from communications to curriculum to the hiring, recruitment, and promotions processes. If you don’t have protected time to do this work, it becomes really challenging. It speaks volumes when an institution provides real financial support. That said, this work can’t rest with one person. Even with a DEI leader, every leader, department, and individual needs to be involved in and own DEI work. Also, DEI leaders need to have training, we can’t just appoint someone because they come from a diverse background. It’s important to either find people with backgrounds in DEI or give people in these roles specific DEI training.

    CFAS: Please tell us about your research into inequity in academic medicine.

    Dr. Wilson: My PhD is in urban education. I and a qualitative researcher examine systemic inequities in schools and society and how they perpetuate disadvantages. I focused on issues such as redlining, lack of access to health care, and the justice system. I now focused on scholarship around unconscious bias in the search and screening processes. There continues to be a need to build pathway programs for getting people into medical school and then faculty positions and leadership positions. 

    CFAS: As a member of the CFAS DEI Committee’s Leadership Team, could you please describe some of the recent work going on in the committee and how you think CFAS could continue to support DEI?

    Dr. Wilson: Recently, the committee got final approval from the AAMC to send out a comprehensive demographics survey to CFAS reps to gather important data on the diversity within CFAS, so we can better measure progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion within our own council. 

    The committee has a lot of potential working with different groups within the AAMC, such as GDI and there is a lot of opportunity in partnering with parallel efforts such the AAMC’s work around gender equity. We can also use the AAMC’s resources to provide best practices. For example, is there a possibility of exploring a standardization of the role of an institutional DEI official (e.g. minimum protected time, like the ACGME does for residency programs or budget expectations based on the size of a school)? In addition, there are opportunities in collecting data on what institutions are doing on the DEI front to discover which kinds of efforts are making progress and which kinds may not be as promising. 

    As I said earlier, DEI must be embedded in everything we do – it’s great to have a committee dedicated to the topics, but it’s better when AAMC groups partner with each other. Academic medicine, the AAMC, and CFAS should continue working to embed DEI in everything—from strategic plans to curriculum. We need DEI to be more mainstream and we need deans and leaders at all levels to be talking about and championing DEI, not just people with DEI roles or individuals from minoritized backgrounds. 

    CFAS: What do you like to do in your free time?

    Dr. Wilson: I love the water and am an avid swimmer. In Indianapolis I was on the local US Masters Swimming Team and now in California I look forward to being able to SCUBA more. I’ve been a swimmer since I was a kid and now am part of a group that volunteers to teach adults to swim. I also love traveling, hiking, and spending time outdoors. Another interesting fact is that I met my partner at a CFAS meeting, and now he is also a CFAS rep!

    Tell Us How You’re Doing 

    Please keep the lines of communication open so we can provide you with the resources and information that would be most useful. It is helpful for the AAMC to understand in detail what is happening on the ground at the medical schools, teaching hospitals, and academic societies we serve. Please email Eric at eweissman@aamc.org, or call directly at 301-437-2572 with updates or feedback from your perspective. You can also reach out with questions or comments to CFAS Communications Specialist Alex Bolt.

    If you are looking for information about CFAS, find what you need on our website, from the names of CFAS leaders, to updates on committee and working group initiatives, to upcoming offerings and meetings, and finally, current and previous editions of CFAS News.

    Do you have an article or study coming out? A new promotion or professional accomplishment? Let us know and we'll feature it in an upcoming edition of the CFAS Rep Bulletin.

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