April 2022

This month’s issue of SGIM Forum includes a wealth of perspectives from leaders across GIM as well as insights from researchers and innovators developing new models of care, advancing health equity at the point of care, and promoting positive professional identity formation among future clinicians.

Dr. Tiffany I. Leung, Editor in Chief, looks forward to the first in-person Annual Meeting since 2019, hopeful that this gathering will feel like a second homecoming. Writing in her final president’s column, Dr. Monica L. Lypson, SGIM President, reflects with gratitude for an immense network of family, friends, colleagues and supporters who have been essential to weathering a pandemic and sustaining a stellar academic career. Dr. Eric Bass, SGIM CEO, interviews Dr. Craig Brater, AAIM President and CEO, about AAIM’s new strategic plan intended to make diversity, equity, and inclusion foundational to future initiatives. A profile of Dr. Amy S. Gottlieb, the Distinguished Professor for Women’s Health for the SGIM Annual Meeting 2022, explores her ongoing advocacy for gender equity in academic medicine.

Dr. Robert Doolan describes the evolution of primary care from a model organized around episodic, office-based care to one that encompasses acute care, chronic disease management, preventative medicine, and population health, and makes the case for a transition from fee for service to a new payment model to support the delivery of comprehensive primary care. A team of researchers from Stanford’s Division of Primary Care and Population Health and San Francisco State University describe a qualitative study aimed at describing Black patients’ perceptions about the COVID-19 vaccine, identifying strategies to support vaccine deliberation that include: “[Listening] intently and completely,” and “[Agreeing] on what matters most.” Dr. David W. Walsh, SGIM Forum Associate Editor, reviews the book Understanding Clinical Negotiation noting that now, more than ever, clinicians need to cultivate skills to engage patients in “active discussion with the hopes of reaching a mutual agreement.” Finally, in this month’s Breadth Section, a team of medical students and faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine describe a novel approach to combat imposter syndrome through reflections on photographic, verbal, and written media.