Why it matters:

Patients are hearing mixed messages about vaccines. To help cut through the confusion, AAFP released its fall immunization recommendations on COVID-19, influenza and RSV immunizations, in coordination with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Medical Association, as part of the Vaccine Integrity Project. 

Read our full press release and for a complete list of recommendations and immunization resources, visit aafp.org/vaccines or familydoctor.org/immunizations. 

AAFP will always advocate for evidence-based and science-backed medicine. Respiratory immunizations should be widely available, easy to locate and affordable for everyone. Caring for our community means removing the barriers that patients run into when trying to protect themselves and their families.

What we’re working on: Our work to highlight the importance of immunizations and prevent policy changes that would reduce vaccine access remain a top priority. 

• AAFP’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Margot Savoy, wrote in the Dallas Morning News about the importance of staying up to date on childhood immunizations. 
• In response to the president’s executive order to change the childhood immunization schedule, AAFP remained firm: vaccines are essential to preventing serious illness and death. Read our full statement, and our joint statement with more than 210 medical groups opposing the order. 
• AAFP submitted a preliminary response to a Request for Information (RFI) from the Department of Health and Human Services that indicates HHS is considering changes to federal vaccine recommendation categories, timing and sequencing of vaccinations, and more. 
• AAFP and a coalition of 70 organizations called on the agency to extend the comment period to October 23 — a 60-day period instead of 27 — to allow for thoughtful and informed feedback from stakeholders. 
• AAFP also responded to the full RFI last week, urging HHS to protect transparent, evidence-based vaccine policymaking. Our response emphasized the need to meaningfully engage clinicians in developing and implementing vaccine recommendations, so they are scientifically sound, practical in real-world care and trusted by physicians and patients. 
• We also urged HHS to preserve established evidence review methods, clarify the shared clinical decision-making category and ensure any terminology changes do not create new barriers to vaccine access, coverage, or eligibility.

LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS

Physician leaders tell lawmakers to protect primary care

Physician leaders from AAFP, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Osteopathic Association and American Psychiatric Association recently went to Capitol Hill to advocate for policies that strengthen primary care and protect patients’ access to care.

Their advocacy focused on four critical priorities:

• Protecting access to community health centers and the National Health Service Corps: Community health centers serve 34 million patients each year, while the NHSC helps bring clinicians to communities with the greatest need. We urged Congress to extend funding before it lapses at the end of 2026.
• Protecting vaccine integrity: Leaders called on Congress to protect the integrity of evidence-based and science-backed immunization recommendations and ensure patients can continue to access life-saving vaccines without cost-sharing.
• Modernizing Medicare payment for primary care: We highlighted the Patients First Act as an important step toward a Medicare payment system that reflects the realities of primary care and supports physicians’ work to keep patients healthy.
• Protecting Medicaid coverage: We opposed Medicaid work requirements that will result in millions of Americans losing coverage and administrative burdens for patients and clinicians.

AAFP shares fall priorities with Congress

Why it matters: 

With the 119th Congress ending in December, family physicians are urging Congress to advance time-sensitive, bipartisan policies that will improve access to care for patients across the country. 

What we’re working on: 

Specifically, AAFP is advocating for passage of:

• Long-overdue reforms to the Medicare physician payment system, as proposed in the Patients First Act (H.R. 9693), that would alleviate the looming reduction to payment rates for 2027;
• Necessary reforms to the use of prior authorization processes by insurers — which take time away from patients and can result in care delays — including the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act (H.R. 3514 / S. 1816)
• Longer-term, robust funding for both community health centers and the National Health Service Corps to keep physicians in high-need areas, as both face expiration on December 31; and
• The H-1Bs for Physicians and the Healthcare Workforce Act (H.R. 7961), which would protect patient access to primary care, especially in rural and underserved communities, by exempting foreign-born physicians from the new $100,000 employer fee.

You can read our full letter here.

Family physicians ask Congress to support payment reform

Why it matters: 

As midterm elections approach, Congress is considering several bills that will improve access to primary care, including the Patients First Act, which is a concrete step toward modernizing a payment system that has historically undervalued primary care.

What we’re working on: 

AAFP submitted a statement for the record for a House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee legislative hearing to address Medicare payment challenges. 

Our letter expresses our support for long-overdue reforms to Medicare physician payment and highlighted four bills under consideration: the Patients First Act, the Provider Reimbursement Stability Act, Medicare Physician Data-driven Performance Payment System Act and the Rural Obstetrics Readiness Act. 

It also expresses our strong concerns with the Ensuring Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act.

AAFP supports legislation to improve access to obstetric care

Why it matters: 

Over 35% of counties nationwide are maternity care deserts — and since 2021, nearly 140 rural hospitals have stopped providing obstetric services or announced that they will stop by the end of this year. This will force many pregnant patients to travel long distances when urgent care is needed. This can lead to adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes if the clinicians on staff are not trained in obstetric care or the facility lacks the necessary supplies and equipment to manage obstetric emergencies.

What we’re working on:

• AAFP backed new, bipartisan legislation from Senators Maggie Hassan and Susan Collins that would help provide critical care to pregnant and postpartum women in rural areas. 
• AAFP joined other health organizations in support of the Rural Obstetrics Readiness Act, which would help rural facilities better manage obstetric emergencies through clinician training, equipment grants, and teleconsultation support networks. 
• We also emphasized our support for the legislation in a letter to Congress ahead of a House Energy and Commerce hearing last week. 
• The Rural Obstetrics Readiness Act passed out of the Senate HELP Committee in July, and we are urging Senate leadership to bring this bill to the floor for full Senate passage.

REGULATORY ROUNDUP

AAFP submits Medicare Physician Fee Schedule comments

Why it matters: 

The 2027 Medicare physician fee schedule proposed rule is out, and AAFP welcomes several provisions. We are particularly encouraged that CMS is signaling better and continued support for primary care, and will:

• Expand the primary care exception, which would give teaching physicians more flexibility to supervise care, improve timely access and support the future primary care workforce.
• Continue to improve valuation of physician services by reexamining potentially misvalued codes and updating payment to better reflect today’s care and costs.
• Expand payment for primary care-oriented services such as advance care planning and shared medical appointments.
• Request information on redesigning primary care payment under the fee schedule to better support preventive, comprehensive care. 

What we’re working on: 

• AAFP submitted comments to CMS welcoming proposals that recognize what family physicians have long known: strong primary care depends on trusted relationships, continuity and long-term patient care.
• AAFP strongly opposes CMS’ proposal to reduce payment when a separately identifiable evaluation and management (E/M) service is provided on the same day as a procedure. Family physicians often address multiple patient concerns in one visit, and this policy would penalize that comprehensive care.
• AAFP warned that the policy could discourage same-day procedures, require extra visits, increase costs and undermine CMS’ broader efforts to strengthen primary care.
• As CMS considers payment reforms, AAFP urges the agency to strengthen — not fragment — the relationships, continuity and comprehensive care that are central to primary care.
• Read the full comment letter and our press statement on the proposed rule.

AAFP leadership participates in ACCESS model event

AAFP Board Chair Jen Brull, MD, a family physician in Fort Collins, Colorado, joined policymakers and national health leaders at a CMS event marking the launch of the ACCESS model. Dr. Brull underscored how the model can better meet patients where they are and support the critical role family physicians play in connecting the dots across a patient’s care. She also made clear that expanding support for patients must strengthen primary care relationships, not create more fragmentation in an already complicated health care system.

Department of Education proposes changes to higher education accreditation

Why it matters: 

The Department of Education has released a proposed rule that would make significant changes to accreditation and quality assurance requirements for postsecondary education programs participating in federal student aid programs.

What we’re working on: 

• AAFP submitted comments on the proposal which addressed new accreditation requirements related to intellectual diversity, student outcomes and earnings, and restrictions on certain relationships between programmatic accreditors and professional associations. 
• Our letter also emphasized that provisions could have implications for health professions education, including longstanding relationships between accreditors and professional organizations that provide expertise on workforce needs, competencies, and educational standards. 
• The proposal also includes expanded transfer credit protections, which AAFP supported throughout the rulemaking process.

AAFP asks Department of Education to revise grant regulations

Why it matters: 

The Department of Education’s Education Department General Administrative Regulations govern federal education grants. A new proposal would change how grants are selected and evaluated. While the AAFP supports efforts to modernize grant administration to ensure responsible distribution of funds, we are concerned this new rule will result in less transparency and certainty for educational institutions. 

What we’re working on: 

• AAFP wrote a letter to the Department of Education raising concerns that several provisions in the proposed rule could create funding uncertainty and disadvantage medical schools, rural-serving institutions and other programs that support physician education and workforce development.
• Our letter urged the department to preserve rigorous, merit-based evaluation; maintain transparent and predictable grant processes; and provide the stability needed for long-term efforts that strengthen the physician workforce and expand access to care. 

AAFP responds to RFI on clinical laboratory improvements

Why it matters: 

Family physicians provide comprehensive, longitudinal care across a diverse range of practice settings, including many physician-owned and physician-directed laboratories.

As CMS and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider potential updates to the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 regulations, AAFP is urging the agencies to modernize laboratory requirements in ways that support quality, patient safety and access to diagnostic services without creating unnecessary burdens for physician office laboratories.

What we’re working on:

• AAFP submitted comments encouraging CMS and CDC to ensure that any approach to CLIA modernization reflects the wide range of existing laboratories; preserves the role of physicians; and promotes laboratory quality, patient safety and access to diagnostic services.
• Our comments emphasized that AI tools can support laboratory medicine but should not replace physician judgment or established clinical decision-making.
• We also urged the agencies to strengthen cybersecurity protections while ensuring responsibility is shared appropriately across technology developers, vendors, laboratories and physicians.

AAFP urges CMS to reject Medicaid provider tax

Why it matters: 

As the government continues to implement H.R. 1, AAFP is advocating against a proposed CMS rule that would largely freeze existing provider tax financing arrangements and limit states’ ability to expand Medicaid financing. AAFP is concerned that the proposal could weaken state Medicaid funding, leading to less access to care for Medicaid patients, especially in rural and underserved communities.

What we’re working on: 

AAFP submitted comments urging CMS to protect state flexibility and avoid unnecessary financing restrictions that could destabilize Medicaid.

Specifically, AAFP urged CMS to:

• Keep the longstanding 75/75 statistical test to enable previously lawful provider tax arrangements to continue supporting the Medicaid program, and avoid implementing restrictions beyond those required by H.R.1;
• Revise the proposed “services of health insurers” tax class and clarify that non-Medicaid state insurer assessments are not subject to Medicaid provider tax rules;
• Align implementation timelines with state operational realities across H.R.1 implementation; and
• Limit state reporting and compliance requirements to only what is necessary to implement the statute.

What we're reading

AAFP SVP of external affairs and practice engagement, Stephanie Quinn, shared with Healio why the Patients First Act will put a modernized Medicare physician payment system that values primary care in reach. 

Medical Economics recapped a panel at PrimaryCare26 with AAFP CEO, Shawn Martin, and Joe Albanese, director of policy for Medicare and Abe Sutton, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. 

In STAT, the presidents of AAFP, American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians highlighted the value of primary care, and how patients need both primary and specialty care to thrive. “Physicians across every specialty, along with payers and policymakers, must work together toward comprehensive payment reform that strengthens primary care, puts patients first and addresses the upstream factors that shape America’s health,” they wrote.

For the latest policy updates impacting family medicine, follow us at @aafp_advocacy.

Dallas family physician and TAFP member Chrisette Dharma, MD, has donated $25,000 to the TAFP Foundation to establish the Dharma Wellness Initiative, an endowment that will provide ongoing support for continuing medical education focused on physician health and well-being.

The initiative will fund educational programming at TAFP's major conferences, including Annual Session and Primary Care Summit, C. Frank Webber Lectureship and Interim Session, and Texas Family Medicine Symposium. Lectures, workshops, and other educational resources may address mental and physical health, professional fulfillment, financial health, and other aspects of physician well-being.

For Dharma, the gift represents an opportunity to support the organization that has helped her navigate the challenges of practicing family medicine while investing in the health and happiness of her colleagues.

"The only people who I feel like have been constantly there with me through all the ups and downs of our career as a family medicine doctor is TAFP," Dharma says.

As an independent physician and owner of Southwest Family Medicine Associates, Dharma understands the pressures of practicing medicine from two perspectives. She manages a practice employing 13 other providers while continuing to see patients herself. She recognizes that the financial and administrative demands of operating a practice can contribute to the same frustrations she experiences as a practicing physician.

Despite those challenges, Dharma says she continues to find tremendous satisfaction in family medicine.

"I still wake up with so much joy," she says.

She wants other physicians to rediscover and preserve that sense of fulfillment, even as they navigate the demands of their careers.

For Dharma, physician well-being begins with recognizing that a physician's identity and worth extend beyond the practice of medicine. She believes physicians need to prioritize their own needs, cultivate interests outside work, and recognize that caring for themselves is essential to sustaining a rewarding career.

"Medicine is a job. It is not your person," she says.

Investing in the physicians who care for Texans

The new initiative expands the philanthropic mission of the TAFP Foundation, which supports educational and scientific initiatives to advance family medicine and improve the health of all Texans.

Established in 1960, the Foundation supports medical student scholarships, family medicine interest groups, resident activities, and practice-based research. Contributions from TAFP members and other donors help strengthen the specialty by investing in the next generation of family physicians and supporting the physicians who serve Texas communities.

According to Kathy McCarthy, CAE, executive director of the TAFP Foundation, Dharma's interest in supporting physician wellness emerged following a previous TAFP Annual Session, just as the Academy's Task Force on Physician Well-Being was beginning to develop recommendations for educational programming.

Dharma wanted her contribution to support wellness education year after year, rather than fund a single presentation. The endowment is designed to preserve its principal while providing annual funding for educational activities, establishing a continuing source of support for physician well-being programming.

Dharma hopes her experience will also encourage other physicians to consider how they might contribute to the future of their specialty during their own lifetimes.

"Can I actually do good while I'm still alive?" was among the questions she considered when exploring the possibility of establishing an endowment.

First Dharma Wellness lecture scheduled for November 8

The Dharma Wellness Initiative will make its debut at TAFP's 2026 Annual Session and Primary Care Summit with a presentation by Sarah Ashitey, MD, titled "The Prescription We Never Wrote Ourselves."

Ashitey, a Dallas family physician with Southwest Family Medicine Associates and a member of the TAFP Board of Directors, will present the lecture on Sunday, November 8, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m.

The inaugural presentation has particular significance for Dharma. Ashitey was once her medical student at UT Southwestern and later joined her practice. Today, Ashitey is a family physician and entrepreneur whose professional interests include coaching and physician well-being.

Having her former student and current colleague deliver the first lecture supported by the endowment brings Dharma's vision full circle.

"If I can help one person, that would be enough," she says.

For more information about Ashitey’s lecture and TAFP's Annual Session and Primary Care Summit, visit www.tafp.org/cme/aspcs.

To learn more about the TAFP Foundation and opportunities to support the future of family medicine, visit www.tafp.org/foundation.

Aiena, a family physician in Huntsville, told committee members that he sees the effects of rising health care costs every day in his practice, at the pharmacy, and in conversations with patients and local employers.

“Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance payments have not kept pace with these practice costs,” Aiena said, adding that the costs of staffing, technology, supplies, and compliance continue to rise. “Prior authorization, documentation, and other administrative burdens keep taking more time and more money away from us, which takes time away from patients.”

Aiena practices in a five-physician independent primary care group serving more than 10,000 patients in Walker County and surrounding communities. He told lawmakers that independent practices face the same rising costs as larger health systems but do not have the same administrative infrastructure, scale, or bargaining power.

“For many independent physicians, selling your practice is not a fun decision,” he said. “It’s a financial survivability decision, and that’s not what’s good for the patients of Texas.”

At the center of TAFP’s testimony was a simple argument: independent physicians are not the cause of the affordability problem, but they can be part of the solution. Independent practices, he said, preserve patient choice, remain closely connected to their communities, and provide meaningful competition.

TAFP asked lawmakers to focus on six policy priorities.

• Make cost and quality information usable. Texas should make better use of the Texas All-Payer Claims Database and consider creating a Health Care Affordability Office within the Comptroller’s office to turn existing data into accessible cost-and-quality information for patients, employers, clinicians, and policymakers.
• Support and fund health care navigators. Patients need neutral assistance understanding provider networks, deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, prior authorization requirements, and other complexities of health coverage.
• Reduce and standardize administrative requirements. TAFP supports reforms including streamlined credentialing, less duplicative documentation, more standardized quality reporting, and reductions in low-value prior authorization.
• Adopt targeted site-neutral payment policies. Comparable routine outpatient services should not cost more simply because a hospital system owns the facility or practice providing them.
• Use Texas’ purchasing power. State employee and educator health plans could be used to test payment models that better support primary care, including predictable per-member, per-month payments tied to measurable results.
• Make primary care sustainable. Texas should recognize and support the work family physicians do between visits — managing chronic disease, coordinating care, following up with patients, and preventing avoidable emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

Aiena emphasized the final point with examples from his own practice.

“Primary care happens when I’m making sure diabetes doesn’t become an [hospital] admission, when I’m making sure hypertension doesn’t become a stroke,” he said. 

“Texas should pay primary care not only for those visits, but for the costly problems it helps avoid,” Aiena said.

He closed by reminding lawmakers that while Texas cannot control every factor driving health care costs, the state still has meaningful policy options available.

“Texas is not powerless,” Aiena said. “There are levers we can pull and there are smart ways we can spend this money to preserve patient choice, empower the patient, and make sure that primary care is strong.”

TAFP’s complete written testimony provides additional detail on each of the association’s recommendations.

AstraZeneca, one of TAFP’s Partners in Health, shared an infographic on the risks of uncontrolled hypertension and the role of aldosterone. Despite the availability of multiple antihypertensive therapies, approximately one in two U.S. adults taking antihypertensive medications may not have controlled blood pressure.

This resource explores the evolving understanding of aldosterone in hypertension, including its relationship with blood pressure and its potential contribution to vascular, cardiac, and renal end-organ damage.

TAFP’s Partners in Health program connects family physicians with organizations committed to supporting family medicine and promoting the health of all Texans. Our Partners provide patient education and high-value tools designed to help family physicians and their care teams deliver well-coordinated, comprehensive primary care. Go to Partners in Health to learn more.

Watch a summit recap

On Friday, August 21, around 75 people from across Texas met for the Family Medicine Leadership Collaborative, facilitated by the Faculty Development Center, and the Clerkship and Residency Coordinators Conference. Educational department chairs, residency program directors, administrators, faculty, coordinators, and other family medicine champions attended to share their experiences, brainstorm ideas, and chat about common challenges.

Friday evening, FMLC and CRCC attendees, as well as students and residents attending the summit, were invited to an opening happy hour. This year’s shirt theme, YEEHAW FAMILY MEDICINE, was a big hit! People loved it so much, we added it to the TAFP merch shop so that you can get your own if you feel so inclined. Thank you to Austin Regional Clinic for sponsoring the evening’s event and thank you to our shirt sponsors — Austin Regional Clinic, Concord Medical Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, TAFP, and the Texas Family Medicine Preceptorship Program.

Saturday’s summit was split into two tracks for students and residents with breaks mixed in for attendees to visit the Residency and Career Fair. Last year’s fair was so well-loved that we managed to make room for a few more exhibitors this year — 32 Texas family medicine residency programs and 11 hiring companies filled the room. This year’s fair also included free headshots once again, sponsored by Integris Assurance Company. 

Topics for students included a panel providing tips for every year of medical school, addressing health misinformation and building trust with patients, possible career paths in family medicine, and student loans. Students also had the opportunity to add a joint injection workshop to get some hands-on experience. Topics for residents included financial wellness, real-world lessons from new physicians, fellowships, and physician contracts. Everyone came together at the end of the day for the closing keynote. AAFP President Sarah Nosal, MD, gave an energetic and passionate talk on equity, access, and advocacy in family medicine. 

Thank you to the TAFP student and resident officers and other TAFP leaders for volunteering to help make the weekend’s events run smoothly. 

Between the large group in attendance and feedback received through a post-event survey, we’d say the third TAFP Student and Resident Summit was a huge success and we can’t wait to do it again in 2027! Thank you to everyone who attended.

For Eduardo Lindsay, MD, family medicine has always been about meeting patients where they are and serving communities with the greatest needs. His path to family medicine began in Panama, where he shadowed a physician who provided free weekend care to Indigenous communities and saw firsthand the impact of compassionate, accessible care. That experience, followed by work in rural mobile clinics and serving as the only physician in a remote rural community, shaped his commitment to comprehensive, patient-centered care. 

Today, Lindsay is a clinical leader with Suvida Healthcare in the Dallas area, where he provides direct patient care to older adults and patients with complex chronic conditions, particularly within underserved Latino communities. He also leads clinical operations and supports quality improvement, population health, and patient experience initiatives. 

Who or what inspired you to become a family physician?
My inspiration to become a family physician began in Panama, where I shadowed a physician who dedicated his weekends to providing free medical care to Indigenous communities. His compassion and commitment to serving those with the greatest need showed me that medicine is about more than treating illness — it is about building relationships, advocating for patients, and improving access to care.

During medical school, I participated in rural mobile clinics, where I witnessed how education, prevention, and coordinated care could transform patients' lives. After graduation, I served as the only physician in a remote rural community, caring for patients with limited resources and managing a wide range of medical conditions. Those experiences taught me the true breadth of family medicine and reinforced the important role family physicians play as clinicians, educators, advocates, and leaders within their communities.

These experiences inspired me to pursue family medicine because it allows me to provide comprehensive, continuous, and compassionate care while building lasting relationships with patients and addressing the broader social factors that influence health.

What unique challenges are represented in your patient community?
The patients I serve face a variety of challenges that extend beyond medical conditions alone. Many are older adults with multiple chronic diseases who also experience barriers related to language, health literacy, transportation, financial limitations, and access to specialty care. Social determinants of health often have a significant impact on their ability to manage chronic illnesses and maintain healthy lifestyles.

Serving a Hispanic community has reinforced the importance of culturally competent, patient-centered care. Building trust, communicating in patients' preferred language, and understanding their cultural values are essential to achieving better health outcomes. These challenges have strengthened my commitment to preventive care, patient education, care coordination, and advocacy to ensure every patient receives the high-quality care they deserve.

You graduated from TAFP’s Family Medicine Leadership Experience. What was your #1 takeaway from the program? 
My greatest takeaway from FMLE was that leadership is about influence, service, and empowering others — not simply holding a title. The program strengthened my communication, collaboration, and advocacy skills while demonstrating how physician leaders can drive meaningful changes for their patients, practices, and communities.

FMLE also reinforced the importance of building relationships with colleagues across Texas who share a common commitment to advancing health equity, supporting physician well-being, and strengthening the family medicine workforce. These connections have been invaluable, providing opportunities to learn from one another and collaborating on solutions to the challenges facing primary care.

The experience inspired me to become more actively involved in serving TAFP, continue growing as a physician leader, and advocating for policies that strengthen primary care, improve health outcomes, and ensure family physicians have the support they need to serve their communities. FMLE transformed my perspective on leadership, reinforcing that meaningful change begins when physicians step forward to serve both their profession and their communities.

Why do you choose to be a TAFP member?
I choose to be a TAFP member because it provides opportunities to learn, lead, and advocate alongside physicians who are passionate about advancing family medicine. TAFP has played a significant role in my professional growth by providing leadership development, mentorship, advocacy opportunities, and a strong network of colleagues committed to improving patient care.

As a physician serving an underserved Hispanic community, I value TAFP's commitment to strengthening primary care, supporting physicians, and promoting policies that improve access to high-quality, patient-centered healthcare. I am especially passionate about advancing health equity, supporting physician well-being, strengthening the family medicine workforce, and ensuring that value-based initiatives remain practical and focused on improving patient outcomes.

Being a member of TAFP allows me to contribute my clinical, operational, and leadership experience while collaborating with colleagues to shape policies and programs that strengthen family medicine and improve the health of the communities we serve.

What do you enjoy doing outside of medicine?
Outside of medicine, I enjoy spending quality time with my family, staying active through outdoor activities, and pursuing lifelong learning. One of the highlights of my week is our family's commitment to music. Every Sunday, I take my children to their private music lessons — my daughter is learning the violin, and my son and I are learning the cello together. It has become a meaningful way for us to learn, grow, and spend time together.

I also enjoy reading about leadership, quality improvement, and healthcare innovation. In addition, I volunteer with my Christian organization, where I support children's programs through health fairs, outdoor activities, camping, first aid instruction, and leadership development.

Maintaining a healthy balance between my professional and personal life keeps me energized, strengthens my commitment to lifelong learning and service, and ultimately helps me provide the best possible care for my patients.

TAFP’s Member of the Month program highlights Texas family physicians in TAFP News Now and on the TAFP website. We feature a biography and a Q&A with a different TAFP member each month and his or her unique approach to family medicine. If you know an outstanding family physician colleague who you think should be featured as a Member of the Month or if you’d like to tell your own story, nominate yourself or your colleague by contacting TAFP by email at tafp@tafp.org or by phone at (512) 329-8666. 

Before it was a vocation, it was a vow —
not the ledger's cold demand,
but the heart's insistent call:
a dual inheritance —
the mind trained to discern,
the heart made spacious enough
to hold the one who suffers,
not merely the suffering itself.

The Patient

It is not the disease that walks through the door —
it is a life, a history, a name
that once was someone's first whispered prayer.
Listen with more than the stethoscope;
listen where certainty ends and probability begins,
where medicine kneels before the singular human heart.

The Art of Medicine

You are the bridge between evidence and mystery,
between the science you command
and the unique soul before you.
Walk that span with grace —
knowing that to cure is the rarest gift,
to treat is your daily devotion,
and to comfort, always —
your unbreakable covenant.

The Physician’s Word

There will come a moment —
and you will recognize it by the stillness in the room —
when no test or treatment matters
as much as what you say next.
Speak with humble confidence.
Let your voice be the medicine
no pharmacy can compound.

The Stewardship of Medical Evidence

Guard the altar of inquiry with reason.
When denial dresses itself in certainty,
and premature conclusions crowd the evidence out,
public health suffers for every truth
bandoned to whim or anecdote.
For Methodology is mercy in another form.

Physician as Teacher

To teach is to extend the reach of healing
past the hour of the appointment. 
Send them home knowing more than when they came —
not diminished by dependence,
but empowered by understanding,
stewards of their own fragile, magnificent lives.

The Physician’s Legacy

Begin each morning in hope,
each evening remembering —
the ones who do not look like you,
speak like you, fear like you.
There is no care without curiosity,
no healing without the willingness
to be changed by those you change.

Your legacy is not written in journals.
It is written in the faces
of those who left your presence
believing that they were seen —
and heard.

For in every true act of healing,
medicine and humanity
are found dwelling together.

Charles Stern, MD, enjoyed a 36 year career in family medicine that included hospital and OB practice in the first half, ambulatory medicine, teaching medical students and residents, administrative leadership, quality and safety and primary care redesign, plus physician wellness. 

After retirement, he found his poetic voice that emerged beside his mother’s deathbed, where he felt the quiet transmission of words between two souls — an echo of her own award-winning life as a published poet. Inspired by nature, medicine, family, and our shared humanity, his writing explores the delicate threads that connect us all. Charles is also the author of a children’s book. “A Call From the Blue,” and an accomplished jazz trumpeter, performing with a big band in Woodway, Texas, where he lives.

"He enjoys spending time with his wife of 39 years, Sharon Stern, MD, a family physician herself, as well as their three grown daughters and their husbands, and four grandchildren."

Our first CME event of 2026, the C. Frank Webber Lectureship and Interim Session, was held in early April in Round Rock, as well as online for those who required a remote option. More than 325 attendees joined us for education, business meetings, leadership programs, and more. A new class of the Family Medicine Leadership Experience began their yearlong program, and the fourth cohort of the Resident Leadership Experience attended their last session and graduated. The RLE class of 20 were mentored all year by TAFP members Fozia Ali, MD, Jonnae Atkinson, MD, Kathy Nguyen, MD, Laura Nietfeld, MD, and Mary Shipman, DO. Additionally, attendees of the Member Assembly with Council Forums heard a TAFP update from President Ike Okwuwa, MD, MBA, a presentation from the Child Psychiatry Access Network and the Perinatal Psychiatry Access Network, and a discussion on downcoding from TAFP member Tina Philip, DO.

TAFP also supports and encourages family medicine involvement in the Texas Medical Association. At this spring’s TexMed conference we offered a 3-hour block of free clinical CME for attendees as well as a coffee break for networking. Three TAFP members were elected or remain in leadership positions with TMA — Dwane Broussard, MD, is now an alternate delegate to AMA; Greg Fuller, MD, retains his position on the TMA board as secretary and treasurer; and Rodney Young, MD, retains his position on the board as an at-large member. Family physicians are well suited to ensure that TMA policies stay focused on improving the health of patients and practices and TAFP is proud that the specialty has such great representation in TMA.

Also in April, Texas was represented well by TAFP members at AAFP’s National Conference of Constituency Leaders. Co-conveners Kenneth Barning, MD, and Joaquin Villegas, MD, MPH, planned and assisted in running the constituency caucuses throughout the meeting. They will also serve as member constituency delegates at AAFP’s Congress of Delegates meeting in October. Additionally, Astrud Villareal, MD, was elected as the women’s constituency co-convener and Carmella DeSerto, MD, was elected as the LGBTQ+ constituency co-convener. They will both serve as alternate delegates to AAFP’s Congress of Delegates.

Medical students are currently shadowing family docs around the state through the Texas Family Medicine Preceptorship Program, which TAFP has administered since 2011. The crucial workforce development initiative matches pre-clinical students with family physicians to expose them to the specialty. More than 200 students are matched this year. Thank you so much to our preceptors for volunteering their time this summer!

After receiving accreditation through the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians this year, for the first time ever TAFP offered CME approved by the American Osteopathic Association for AOA Category 1-A credits at the Texas Family Medicine Symposium. With three osteopathic medical schools in Texas, the percentage of TAFP members who are osteopaths continues to increase. Currently, 15% of active members and 33% of resident members trained at osteopathic medical schools. Like our other CME conferences, TFMS was offered in person as well as online, helping TAFP meet the needs of our members statewide.

Thank you for your continued membership — we couldn’t do what we do without your support. And be sure to follow TAFP on your favorite social media channel to stay up to date on all things Texas family medicine!

“The primary care shortage isn’t a future problem; it is a current crisis,” says Eric Lee, MD, who chairs TAFP’s Council on Workforce and Member Engagement. “The support that organized medicine groups like TAFP provide in supporting students and residents is significant. Although the culture of medical education is changing, at many medical schools, students are pushed toward higher-paying, procedure-heavy specialties. TAFP helps showcase the importance of family medicine to students as well as the profound impact, intellectual variety, and meaningful patient relationships a career in family medicine can provide.”

And while the news can make the future of family medicine and healthcare in general seem doom and gloom, there are certainly bright spots. “The future of family medicine is bright,” Lee says. “If you look at the headlines — the administrative burden of electronic health records, the insurance battles — it’s easy to feel anxious about the future. But when you work in academics and interact with actual people entering the field, it is impossible not to feel incredibly hopeful.”

The Academy works hard to help build the specialty’s workforce. Keep reading for some of our most notable student and resident efforts. 

Student and resident events

After years of holding specialized student and resident tracks at our C. Frank Webber Lectureship and Primary Care Summit, the timing was right in 2024 to launch an annual event for only the students and family medicine residents of Texas. The TAFP Student and Resident Summit is held every August with TAFP members and other professionals speaking on topics like financial wellness, contracts, family medicine career paths, tips from new physicians, building trust with patients, and more. There is also time for networking, a procedural workshop, and a Residency and Career Fair. 

TAFP staff attend AAFP’s National Conference for the Future of Family Medicine, also called FUTURE, to network with the state’s residency programs in attendance, as well as throw an evening social for all Texas attendees. Residency programs can also invite medical students they are trying to recruit as another opportunity to chat about family medicine in Texas.

The annual Research Poster Competition promotes scholarly activity, providing students and residents with a unique opportunity to share research with the wider TAFP membership. Participants are invited to attend Annual Session and Primary Care Summit each fall to display their work and get feedback in live time from CME attendees. Student winners receive plaques and resident winners receive cash prizes, with the top overall resident also receiving travel funding for a national research conference of their choosing. 

Funding

The TAFP Foundation supports funding for students and residents in a number of ways. Travel funding is provided for student and resident officers to attend a number of meetings and events, for poster competition participants to attend ASPCS, for three medical students per school and one resident per program to attend TAFP’s Student and Resident Summit, and for medical students to attend AAFP FUTURE. The foundation also offers scholarships, support for family medicine interest groups, and research grants. 

The TAFP Foundation also launched the Texas Family Medicine Scholars Program to recognize and further develop the leadership skills of Texas family medicine residents. Two scholars are chosen during their first year of residency, each receiving a total of $10,000 to be paid throughout their residency. They are paired with a mentor, receive travel funding to attend TAFP meetings, and develop a project or presentation during the program to further the goals of TAFP or the TAFP Foundation. The goal of the scholarship is to develop a series of leaders who will continue to give back to their specialty and community. Since its inception in 2020, the initiative has supported 12 residents throughout their training.

Other support and opportunities 

The Texas Family Medicine Preceptorship Program matches first- or second-year students enrolled in a Texas medical school with an experienced and skilled family physician for a two- to four-week period to help them gain real-life experience in a community setting. By participating in our preceptorship program, students will have the unique opportunity to explore what it means to be a family physician. “By connecting residents and students with practicing physicians, TAFP creates a professional community before careers even fully begin,” Lee says.

As a way to stay in touch with graduating residents, TAFP collects contact information from them throughout the summer through an emailed form. In August once they are settled in post-residency, we mail graduation gifts — a box of TAFP goodies and items for them to outwardly display their love of family medicine. “The graduation gift campaign has been quite successful, reaching hundreds of soon-to-be new physicians every year,” says TAFP Membership and Workforce Development Manager Juleah Williams. “Not only does it act as a connection between TAFP and graduating residents, but it allows us to celebrate with them as they transition to their family medicine careers.”

Students and residents are invited to participate in official TAFP business as officers and board members, but also through the Resident Leadership Experience. Loosely based on the curriculum of the Family Medicine Leadership Experience, RLE is a yearlong leadership development program designed to equip family medicine residents with the skills they need to thrive in their future practice. In today’s rapidly changing environment, healthcare enterprises need leaders who can anticipate what’s coming next, make solid decisions in the face of ambiguity, and deploy their talent effectively. TAFP believes these leaders should be well-trained family physicians and the RLE program helps to build those leaders up.

TAFP staff and leaders host a number of webinars aimed at students and residents each year — a welcome to Texas webinar for family medicine residents new to the state, a transition to practice webinar for recently graduated residents, an orientation webinar focused on efficiently planning for AAFP’s FUTURE conference, and others. 

New physician Madeline Hazle, MD, has been a very active TAFP member since medical school. She initially joined to learn more about the specialty, but stuck around because of the people. 

“What kept me involved was the opportunity to connect with physicians, residents, and students from across Texas who were passionate about patient care and advocacy,” she says. “I encourage students and residents to be active in TAFP because it offers opportunities that complement their medical training. TAFP helps ensure that future physicians are prepared not only clinically, but also as leaders who understand healthcare policy, physician wellness, practice management, and patient advocacy. By investing in students and residents, TAFP strengthens the future of family medicine and helps create a healthcare system that can better serve patients across Texas.”

I remember the first time I saw her eyes. They were blue, like mine. They stared up at the ceiling, and I thought, doesn’t she need to blink? She lay perfectly still, unaware of my presence. Two other students were with me, and we silently looked up at one another across the patient. Without uttering a single word, we came to the same conclusion. She’s dead. She once lived, and now she’s gone. 

I was the first to pick up the scalpel. Is everyone ready? We all drew our breaths. We’d been studying, preparing, anticipating this moment for years. Yes. We think so. It seemed simple enough in the textbook. 

Okay. I exhale softly and make the first cut. The hand that I expected to tremble is calm. I hold the scalpel like a pencil and cut straight down. Not too shallow, and not too deep. Where is all the blood? Why doesn’t she cry out? I shake the childish thoughts out of my head. 

We have a few hours to reveal, explore, and identify. Muscles, nerves, arteries, veins. Cut, reflect, scissor, and remove the fat. I look back and I see one of my partner’s hands resting on the patient’s shoulder. I pause. Is everything alright, they ask. I blink away the wetness that suddenly wells in my eyes. Yes. Let’s continue.

The next day, we return to our patient. She remains as motionless as the last time we visited, yet I feel that she is expecting us. Yesterday’s incisions lie open, and I almost feel shy peering inside. We continue to reveal the innermost aspects of our patient, growing more confident over time. We adjust the patient, we raise her arms and legs, we turn her shoulders and hips. It begins to feel right. I no longer notice the smell. Yet I know it lingers about me. On weekends, with my family, with my friends, and with strangers, I know they notice. What exactly is it they see or smell about me? I don’t let myself consider the question. Not yet. 

On our last day in the cadaver lab, I look over the patient. She’s unrecognizable. She has been dissected in every possible orientation, and each of her organs has been exposed. My partners look at me. Are you ready to cover her up? I glance at her one remaining eye. It’s still as blue as the day I met her. Yes, I say, meeting their stares. But first, I lay a hand on our patient’s shoulder and return my attention to her. We should thank her. We stand as silently as our patient lies and we reflect. After a moment, I cover her up.

What was it that brought tears to my eyes on that first day? It was the recognition of the gift our patient had given us. When my partner touched her shoulder, he touched a part of her that was once held in life. As we felt her hand, she too had a mother, father, lover, and a child. As we beheld her eyes, so too did she once gaze upon life. As we explored her heart, so too did her heart once explore the world. She gave us her first breath, and her last. She gave us every memory, every joy, and every sorrow. She gave us everything that remained to her in the end, and she didn’t even know our names. 

I’ll never be able to truly thank my first patient for the gifts she offered. What I promise to do, however, is to remember her. I will give her the gift of immortality through my thoughts and actions. I will be a doctor who recognizes each patient for their individual humanity, and I will treat each with as much love as my first patient.

Benji Popokh, MD, is a first-year resident at the JPS Family Medicine Residency Program in Fort Worth as well as a 2025 Pisacano Scholar. He publishes personal writing at substack.com/@benjipopokh and plans to practice full-spectrum family medicine including obstetrics after completing residency.

This summer, our nation marked 250 years of American independence, a milestone that invites reflection not only on the freedoms we have secured, but also on the work that remains. Building a healthcare system that is accessible, accountable, and affordable is very much part of that unfinished work.

History tells us that major healthcare reform comes in cycles. Roughly every 12 to 15 years, policymakers reshape some aspect of the system. Medicare and Medicaid expanded coverage to seniors and low-income Americans in 1965. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, and managed care transformed employer-sponsored insurance in the 1970s and 1980s. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, and the Balanced Budget Act reshaped payment and coverage rules in the 1990s. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program expanded coverage for children, followed by Medicare Part D and the modern Medicare Advantage program. The Affordable Care Act then dramatically reduced the number of uninsured Americans, while largely leaving unresolved the more difficult question of why healthcare costs continue to rise.

Today, as we are approaching the end of that latest reform cycle, healthcare affordability has emerged as one of the defining policy issues facing Texas and the nation. Patients, employers, and taxpayers are no longer asking only whether they have coverage, they are asking whether that coverage is affordable, whether it provides value, and why the cost of care continues to climb. For the first time in years, policymakers are listening.

That makes this legislative interim one of the most consequential in recent memory.

TAFP has spent the past several months ensuring that family physicians are at the center of these conversations. The Academy provided testimony before both the Texas House Select Committee on Healthcare Affordability and the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to help frame the issue of rising costs as a structural problem rather than simply a reimbursement issue. TAFP highlighted the market forces driving costs higher, including hospital consolidation, site-of-service payment disparities that reward care delivered in more expensive settings, facility fees attached to routine services, and growing payer market concentration that places increasing pressure on independent physician practices.

The Academy also emphasized the administrative burdens that consume physician time and practice resources every day, including prior authorization, credentialing delays, and regulatory complexity, even as physician payment has remained essentially flat.

Across both hearings, TAFP consistently advanced three priorities: increasing price transparency, restoring competition through market reforms, and strengthening the primary care workforce. The Academy discussed practical policy solutions including site-neutral payment policies, limits on unnecessary facility fees, restrictions on anti-competitive contracting practices, prior authorization reform, streamlined credentialing, and support for innovative models such as direct primary care and subscription-based practices.

Underlying every recommendation was a simple but powerful message: family medicine remains the most effective and affordable entry point into the healthcare system, and strong primary care remains one of the best long-term strategies for improving health while controlling costs.

At the same time, TAFP continues to lead efforts to address Texas’ rural maternal health crisis. Alongside Texas A&M’s Rural and Community Health Institute, Texas Health Institute, and numerous partner organizations, the Academy co-convened the Rural Texas Maternal Health Rescue Plan, a statewide blueprint focused on rebuilding maternity care in rural communities. Recommendations include improving Medicaid reimbursement, expanding workforce pipelines, and supporting innovative models such as family medicine-obstetrics.

The evidence behind all this work has never been stronger. The Texas Health Institute and the Texas Primary Care Consortium recently released Primary Care in Texas: A System at a Crossroads — the most comprehensive statewide assessment of primary care’s structural condition in years. The report’s central conclusion is one that family physicians have long understood from the exam room: primary care in Texas is neither failing nor fully secure. It is indispensable and increasingly vulnerable — not for lack of effort or innovation, but because of a persistent misalignment between what primary care is expected to do and how it is financed, measured, and supported. These findings give lawmakers a clear, data-driven roadmap, and they give TAFP exactly the kind of evidence base needed to make the case for structural reform in 2027.

None of this progress happens through a single hearing or one legislative session. Meaningful reform requires years of education, relationship building, and persistent advocacy. Every committee hearing, every legislative meeting, and every physician who shares their experience helps policymakers better understand how decades of misaligned incentives have shaped today’s healthcare system — and how family medicine can help build a better one.

As we prepare for the 2027 legislative session, the opportunity before us is significant. Family physicians occupy a unique position in healthcare, seeing firsthand how rising costs affect patients, families, employers, and communities. By remaining engaged with TAFP’s advocacy efforts, you help ensure that those real-world experiences continue to shape the policies that will define the next chapter of healthcare reform in Texas.

Emily Briggs, MD, MPH, doesn’t hesitate when giving this response. She’s explaining why she spends evenings at committee meetings after a full day in clinic. Why she testifies before lawmakers. Why she answers reporters’ calls when maternal health becomes a national story. Why she keeps saying yes to one more responsibility when her schedule already seems impossibly full.

To Briggs, those aren’t separate jobs competing with the practice of medicine. They are the practice of medicine.“I was very clear about what my vision was,” she says. “I had this interdisciplinary model in mind from my fellowship.”

“If those of us who have the opportunity — who have the privilege to make the world a better place — don’t do that, why do we exist?” she asks. “The purpose of living is to be in community, and a community member does best for the community by helping lift everybody.”

Spend enough time with Briggs, and you’ll notice that she doesn’t draw a line between caring for one patient and caring for thousands. One day, that means delivering a baby in New Braunfels. Another day, it means helping a medical student discover what kind of physician they want to become. On another day, it means standing before a legislative committee to explain how a policy will affect the women and families she knows by name.

The setting changes. The calling does not.

That philosophy has guided her through more than 16 years of practicing full-spectrum family medicine, including operative obstetrics, while becoming one of the most respected physician leaders in Texas. It has shaped her service to local hospitals, school districts, organized medicine, and maternal health initiatives. It has helped her earn the trust of colleagues across the state, who have repeatedly asked her to lead — not because she sought the spotlight, but because they knew she would never lose sight of the patient.

It is also why the Texas Academy of Family Physicians named Emily Briggs its 2025 Texas Family Physician of the Year, recognizing a career defined not only by clinical excellence, but by service to patients, communities, and the profession of family medicine.

Yet if you ask Briggs how she got here, she won’t talk about awards or leadership positions. She’ll probably tell you she couldn’t make up her mind.

“I liked everything,” she says, recalling her third-year medical school rotations. Pediatrics convinced her she should become a pediatrician. Surgery made her think she belonged in the operating room. Internal medicine fascinated her. Obstetrics offered continuity, procedures, and the privilege of delivering babies.

Each new rotation seemed to reveal the specialty she was destined to pursue. Her family medicine rotation came last.

“I thought, ‘Oh … so I can do everything,’” she says. “‘I can do surgeries, I can have continuity with my patients, I can see them in the hospital and in the office, I can take care of the baby as well as the mom. I can deliver that baby. Yes, this is what I want to do.’”

Saying “yes” is what you can expect from Emily Briggs, and family medicine has offered her myriad opportunities to say “yes.” 

Early in her medical training, someone gave her advice that would become one of the defining principles of her career. Always say yes.

Briggs credits those three simple words with opening doors she never could have planned for herself. By saying yes, she learned to care for the sickest patients, to embrace uncertainty, and to discover that family medicine was far broader and far more rewarding than she had imagined.

“By me saying yes to everything,” she says, “I got exposed to so many opportunities.”

That willingness to say yes would lead her to open an independent practice in New Braunfels, deliver more than a thousand babies, mentor dozens of medical students, serve as president of TAFP, and become one of Texas’ leading voices on maternal health.

After earning her biology degree from Texas A&M University, Briggs completed both her medical degree and Master of Public Health at UT Houston before training at the Christus Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency Program in San Antonio. Since opening Briggs Family Medicine in 2009, she has remained committed to practicing the broadest possible scope of family medicine while continually seeking new ways to improve care for her community.

She delivers babies, performs cesarean sections, rounds on hospitalized patients, provides preventive care, manages chronic disease, and cares for multiple generations of families. At a time when many physicians have narrowed their scope of practice, Briggs has intentionally chosen to expand hers.

“She provides comprehensive care for all ages and knows her patients extensively,” wrote family physician Erin Wright, MD, in her nomination letter. “She continues to practice FMOB and manages her own patients when acutely ill and hospitalized in a time when most primary care physicians have transitioned to exclusive clinic work.”

Her commitment to maternal health has become one of the defining threads of her career.

In 2024, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists named Briggs an honorary fellow — an uncommon distinction recognizing her extraordinary contributions to obstetric care despite not being an obstetrician-gynecologist. The honor reflected years of work advancing maternal health in Texas, particularly in rural communities where access to obstetrical care continues to decline.

Yet awards have never been the goal. For Briggs, obstetrics represents one of family medicine’s greatest privileges: being present at the beginning of a family’s story.

A wall in her clinic is covered with photographs of kids she’s delivered, and her smile beams as she tells stories of these patients and friends. They comprise such an important part of the tapestry of her life in family medicine, a life that includes building a practice, raising a family, supporting and leading professional organizations, mentoring students, and advocating for patients across Texas and the nation.

Along the way, Briggs has received guidance from many mentors who challenged, encouraged, and inspired her. Mentors who showed her not only how to practice family medicine, but how to imagine what the specialty could become.

Three were faculty members at her residency program: James Martin, MD; Leah Raye Mabry, MD; and Larry Karrh, MD. Each shaped a different part of the physician she would become.

Martin taught her to think beyond the immediate problem — to imagine not just where family medicine was, but where it could be. Mabry demonstrated that conviction and compassion were never mutually exclusive. Karrh showed her that confidence wasn’t about having every resource at hand. It was about trusting your training, solving problems creatively, and never letting uncertainty keep you from caring for the patient in front of you.

Those mentors gave Briggs a sense of confidence, and they came at just the right time for her, because medical school hadn’t been a walk in the park. 

“It was the worst time of my life,” she says. The pressure, the constant comparison, and the feeling of never being good enough left Briggs feeling defeated. “You are trained into imposter syndrome in medical school.”

That experience changed the kind of teacher she wanted to become. As a faithful participant in the Texas Family Medicine Preceptorship Program, Briggs often hosts medical students completing their rotations. Rather than expecting every learner to fit the same mold, Briggs tries to understand what each student needs. 

“I tend to bend to what their experience is and what they need as individuals,” she explained. “I want to make sure that I’m helping them in a way that is helpful to them.”

Elysse Reyes, MD, experienced that philosophy from the moment she arrived for her rotation in her third year of medical school. Before discussing schedules or expectations, Briggs asked a question Reyes had never heard from another preceptor.

“What do you want this experience to look like?”

It was a simple question that left a lasting impression on Reyes. During the rotation, Reyes accompanied Briggs in the clinic, hospital rounds, deliveries, caesarean sections, county medical society meetings, and even community outreach meetings during a local measles outbreak.

She expected to learn medicine, but she learned something more. She learned how family medicine feels.

She watched Briggs explain every step before beginning a pelvic examination. She noticed the fuzzy socks available for patients whose feet rested in cold stirrups. She watched her pause long enough to answer every question, no matter how busy the day became.

Sometimes Briggs even sang quietly to help anxious patients relax, Reyes wrote in a nomination letter. None of those gestures appeared in a clinical guideline. None affected billing codes or quality metrics. Yet together they revealed a physician who understood that dignity is every bit as important as diagnosis.

“Everything she does for her patients is done with great and deliberate care,” Reyes wrote. “Every movement, every word, and every charted note is done with the patient in mind.”

By the end of the month, Reyes realized she had learned far more than procedures or treatment algorithms.

“I had spent the majority of my third year learning medicine,” she wrote. “But with Dr. Briggs, I learned the art of medicine.”

Briggs still remembers the first TAFP meeting she attended as a medical student. A classmate told her there would be representatives from residency programs and family doctors from around the state, and there would be free registration, a hotel room, and maybe even a stipend to help cover expenses.

“Sure,” she thought. “Why not?”

For the first time, she saw physicians debating public policy, wrestling with scientific evidence, mentoring students, and working together to improve the health of communities they might never personally visit. She was invited to sit in committee meetings. People wanted to know what a medical student thought. They listened and they welcomed her into conversations she hadn’t imagined herself joining.

“I fell in love with organized medicine from that very first meeting,” she says. She has been saying yes ever since.

Helen Kent Davis is the founder and principal of HKD and Associates, a healthcare policy consulting firm, and for many years she served as a senior health policy expert for the Texas Medical Association. She remembers meeting Briggs nearly 15 years ago at a meeting of TMA’s Select Committee on Medicaid, CHIP, and the Uninsured. Briggs wasn’t even a committee member. When public testimony began, she stood to speak — not about policy, but about people.

She told stories of patients who borrowed neighbors’ cars just to make it to an appointment. Parents who wanted to follow medical advice but couldn’t afford another prescription. Young mothers working multiple jobs while trying to manage chronic illness and raise children. Somehow, despite the relentless pace of family medicine, Briggs had learned their stories, and she carried those stories with her into the policy arena.

“Her comments were not about abstract patients, but real people,” Davis wrote. “The stories she shared helped some of her more jaded colleagues in the room see Medicaid patients as people, not just ‘the poor.’”

Over the years, Briggs has served in virtually every level of physician leadership — from local medical societies to TAFP, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Texas Medical Association, and the American Medical Association. She has chaired committees, led chapters, represented Texas physicians nationally, and helped shape policies affecting patients across the country. 

For her, dedication to organized medicine and other leadership opportunities isn’t about accolades or status. Instead, leadership has always been another way to care for patients.

The founder of the Texas Campaign for Mothers, Libby McCabe, witnessed the same quality during emotionally charged debates surrounding the effort to pass Senate Bill 31, the Life of the Mother Act, in the 2025 Texas Legislature. Even amid disagreement, Briggs refused to demonize those who saw the issues differently. 

Instead, she remained focused on the patients whose lives depended on thoughtful solutions. McCabe admired her ability to communicate difficult truths with clarity, credibility, and compassion.

“She always struck the necessary balance of highlighting the severity of the situation and the critical need for change, without assigning partisan blame,” McCabe wrote in a nomination letter. “Her voice was incredibly impactful.”

There’s so much more to tell about Dr. Emily Briggs: her love of making music, her devotion to her two children and husband (who often call her “Dr. Meetings” because she’s always running off to another conference, many times taking them along for the ride), her 2024 interview with 60 Minutes on Texas’ strict abortion laws, and the multitude of pets of every sort along the way. 

As Elysse Reyes put it, Briggs is “an octopus juggling her various roles: physician healer, patient advocate, public health expert, community leader, business owner, hospitalist, obstetrician, teacher, wife, mother, and more.” Yet she carries those responsibilities not with fanfare, but with grace, humility, and what Reyes calls “a genuine love for humanity.”

By the end of the rotation, Reyes realized she had learned something she hadn’t expected.

“I knew before Dr. Briggs that I wanted to practice family medicine,” she wrote. “After Dr. Briggs, I knew how I wanted to do it.”

Just as her mentors helped shape her, Briggs demonstrates for all of us how to say yes, and how to care for our community in the exam room and out in the world. In doing so, she passes down an inheritance of purpose. 

The patient who walks through the front door of Briggs Family Medicine tomorrow morning probably won’t know she is being cared for by the TAFP Family Physician of the Year. She won’t know about the committee meetings or the testimony before legislators or the national leadership positions.

She will simply know that her physician is there for her — whether the patient needs her in an exam room, a delivery room, a classroom, or the halls of the Capitol. 

If not me, then who?

Emily Briggs, MD, MPH, has spent her career caring for patients, mentoring future physicians, and strengthening family medicine. Meet the 2025 Texas Family Physician of the Year and the people and principles that shaped her path.

By Jonathan Nelson

FROM THE CEO: Shaping the next era of healthcare reform

Get caught up with an advocacy environmental scan in advance of the 90th Texas Legislature.

By Tom Banning

TAFP fosters the future of family medicine

Through special events like the TAFP Student and Resident Summit, funding opportunities, leadership training, and more, your Academy is laser-focused on supporting and engaging the next generation of family physicians.

By Samantha White

MEMBER NEWS: Building momentum in 2026

Discover everything your Academy has been up to so far this year, from our CME events to national conferences, our support of the Texas Family Medicine Preceptorship Program, and so much more.

By Samantha White

HEALTHY PRACTICE: Help patients access trusted information about pregnancy emergencies

Asking for a Mom offers patient education on the Life of the Mother Act.

By Jonathan Nelson

MEMBER VOICES: My first patient’s final gift

By Benji Popokh, MD

FOUNDATION FOCUS: 2025 TAFP Foundation Annual Report

ART & MEDICINE: Physician's Covenant

A narrative poem by Charles Stern, MD.

The task force began when Jessica Glick, DO, our founding chair, was inspired by her experience participating in AAFP’s Leading Physician Well-Being Scholars program. The knowledge and skills gained through the program sparked a vision to bring this mission to Texas, and TAFP’s Council on Workforce and Member Engagement leadership approved the creation of a new task force. Now, more than 20 TAFP members, including scholars from the AAFP program and other members passionate about physician well-being, are ready to serve on the Physician Well-Being Task Force. Together, we bring a wealth of expertise, dedication, and commitment to making physician well-being an integral and lasting part of TAFP.

Cultivating the well-being of family physicians is one of the most important investments we can make in the future of our profession. Physicians today are practicing in an environment of increasing complexity, competing demands, administrative burdens, workforce challenges, and ever-growing expectations. Family physicians give so much of themselves to their patients, their teams, and their communities. Yet, too often, the well-being of the physician is placed last. Supporting physicians must be viewed not as an additional initiative, but as an essential investment in the sustainability of our profession and the health of the patients and communities we serve.

What makes this task force unique is that our work is member-driven. We are not developing initiatives based solely on what we think physicians need. Instead, we are listening directly to our members and using their experiences to shape our priorities. The first well-being survey conducted in 2025 provided valuable insight into what TAFP members are experiencing, what challenges they are facing, and where they believe additional support is needed. Those findings help guide the initiatives and resources we are developing and will continue to serve as the foundation for our work moving forward.

In other words, this truly is by members, for members.

We recognize that there is no single definition of well-being and no one solution that will work for every physician. The needs of a resident may differ from those of an early-career physician, a physician in mid-career, or someone preparing for retirement. Similarly, the experience of a physician practicing in a rural community may be very different from that of someone working in an academic center, private practice, community health center, or hospital-based setting. Our goal is to recognize and learn from these differences rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach.

The task force focuses on creating opportunities for connection, education, support, advocacy, and meaningful change. While individual well-being strategies have an important role, we also recognize that physician well-being cannot rest solely on an individual’s ability to be more resilient. We must also consider the systems and environments in which physicians practice and work together to identify ways to make those environments healthier and more sustainable. You will soon begin to see our work in TAFP’s News Now, on TAFP social media, and on TAFP’s well-being homepage. And don’t forget that AAFP also has a physician well-being hub on their site.

We know that the most important work happens when we listen. The survey provided an important starting point, but it is only one part of the conversation. We want to continue hearing from TAFP members across Texas. We invite our members to continue sharing their experiences, ideas, challenges and needs with us. Together, we can strengthen the well-being of Texas family physicians and, in doing so, strengthen the future of family medicine and the communities we serve.

We welcome your input, feedback, and ideas as we continue this important work. Please feel free to contact the task force directly at tafpwellbeing@gmail.com and share your thoughts with us! 

Christine Camacho, MD, FAAFP, is a dual board-certified physician in family medicine and obesity medicine practicing in San Antonio, Texas. She serves as an associate professor at UT Health San Antonio and core faculty for the family medicine residency program. Passionate about physician well-being and fostering a culture of wellness in medicine, she is recognized as an AAFP Leading Physician Well-Being Scholar and serves as a member of the TAFP Well-Being Task Force.

The TTU System Board of Regents on August 13 approved Young’s appointment as a Grover E. Murray Professor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. The professorship, named for the eighth president of Texas Tech University, recognizes faculty members who have achieved national and international distinction through outstanding research, scholarship, and creative achievement.

Young, professor and regional chair of the TTUHSC Department of Family and Community Medicine in Amarillo, said the recognition came as a surprise, and that his years of involvement in organized medicine played an important role in making it possible.

“My work through TMA and TAFP, which has been far more joy than work, is no doubt a major reason why this honor has come my way,” Young said. “Just as it is at TTUHSC, my colleagues at TMA and TAFP have made me a much better physician and educator, and I’m enormously grateful to have gathered so many fantastic friends and mentors along the way.”

Young joined the TTUHSC School of Medicine as an assistant professor in 2000 and has served as regional chair of Family and Community Medicine in Amarillo since 2003. A graduate of both the TTUHSC School of Medicine and its family medicine residency program, he has devoted more than 25 years to patient care, medical education, scholarship, and service.

TTUHSC President Lori Rice-Spearman, PhD, described Young as an exceptional ambassador for the institution and its mission.

“Whether advocating for fellow physicians in Austin, caring passionately for his patients, who have come to consider him a trusted friend and adviser or guiding students as they become exceptional healthcare providers, he brings a heart of service to everything he does,” Rice-Spearman said. “His impact extends far beyond the Panhandle, and he has been an inspiration to so many.”

That impact has long extended into organized medicine. Young has intentionally made involvement in TAFP and the Texas Medical Association part of his professional life, arguing that physicians can make time to participate if they want their firsthand experiences to help shape health policy.

When TAFP profiled Young after naming him the 2018 Texas Family Physician of the Year, he talked about organized medicine as something physicians need to make time for — and show up for.

“Everybody’s busy, no one has time to get involved,” Young said at the time. “You just literally have to prioritize it, decide it’s important and that you’re going to do it.” He encouraged physicians to “show up” and bring their own experiences to the discussion, saying those perspectives can help colleagues refine ideas and develop more effective solutions.

Young’s own advocacy has focused heavily on strengthening the primary care workforce, expanding graduate medical education and improving access to care. Through his work with TAFP and TMA, he helped develop recommendations later incorporated into state legislation that contributed to an approximately 45% increase in graduate medical education funding. He also helped develop model legislation improving licensure pathways for international medical graduates and proposals that formed the basis of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Graduate Medical Education Expansion Grant Program.

He has also held leadership positions within TAFP, TMA, and the American Medical Association and was elected to serve on the TMA Board of Trustees. He previously chaired TMA’s Councils on Medical Education and Socioeconomics.

Young’s academic accomplishments include more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and invited presentations before regional, national, and international audiences. At TTUHSC, he has received the Dean’s Clinical Teaching Award, the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award, and multiple teaching awards from students and residents. The School of Medicine named him a Distinguished Alumnus in 2011. 

For Young, however, the new honor remains closely tied to the work and relationships that have defined his career.

“At TTUHSC, I found a career that is purpose-built for service to our patients, our students, our colleagues, and our West Texas communities,” he said. “Our work has both immediate and enduring impact, helping our friends and neighbors navigate the complexities of our healthcare system, while cultivating, supporting, and developing the next generation of doctors and other health professionals to do the same.”

AstraZeneca, one of TAFP’s Partners in Health, recently released a COPD Checklist: A Tool for Optimizing Patient Care.

This checklist is based on the 2026 GOLD Report and can be useful when considering a Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) diagnosis in patients with dyspnea, chronic cough to sputum production, frequent lower respiratory tract infections, and/or a history of exposure to risk factors. Additionally, included on the infographic are strategies for initial management and pharmacological treatment, patient education, and quality standards for COPD care.

TAFP’s Partners in Health program connects family physicians with organizations committed to supporting family medicine and promoting the health of all Texans. Our Partners provide patient education and high-value tools designed to help family physicians and their care teams deliver well-coordinated, comprehensive primary care. Go to Partners in Health to learn more.

In 2023 TAFP officially launched the High School Wellness Graduation Cord Project, a brainchild of the Council on Health of the Public. The community outreach project was initially piloted by member Li-Yu Mitchell, MD, in Whitehouse, Texas. The program gives family docs another way to be active in their communities and encourages high school seniors to take matters into their own hands when it comes to their health and wellness. Mitchell presented the idea to the council after discussing it with her local SHAC in Whitehouse. 

“The state does not require students to take health class for graduation,” Mitchell says. “Our SHAC felt that there were basic health concepts that students still needed to be exposed to prior to graduation and so the honor cord project was born.”

Through the program, members collaborate with their local school districts and School Health Advisory Councils to help graduating seniors meet specific health-related requirements to earn a TAFP honor cord to wear at graduation. Honor cords recognize special distinctions or student accomplishments and are often highly sought after by graduates. 

What’s a SHAC?

Texas law requires every school district to have a SHAC, a group typically made up of mostly parents plus community stakeholders. Mitchell feels strongly about local family physicians joining their SHAC to help school districts navigate various health topics and situations. “For example, during most legislative sessions, the Texas Legislature seems to create new health-related mandates that school districts have to implement,” Mitchell says. “Family physicians are well-equipped to weigh in on how these are implemented, which may mean reviewing some of the prospective curriculum to help the school choose the right vendor to administer them, or assisting the district in navigating the repercussions of new rules.”

With kids going back to school this month, now is the perfect time to not only get involved in your SHAC, but also to present the project to your SHAC and district. Marketing the program to students typically starts in the early spring, giving seniors a few months to complete the requirements. 

How does the program work?

The Council on Health of the Public set a required rubric that students must complete to earn their cords. Requirements include a number of wellness-related tasks that will set them up to be healthy adults, including:

• Having up-to-date immunizations (alternatively, students can demonstrate that they’ve been educated on various vaccines by reviewing information and answering relevant questions);
• Seeing a dentist;
• Completing a food/nutrition diary;
• Having an annual physical;
• Writing a brief on volunteer service; and
• Watching three short videos on relevant health topics and completing a short quiz on each video (topics include stress management, exercise and nutrition, alcohol abuse, smoking and vaping, and more).

TAFP provides graduation cords for the district which are typically presented to seniors who completed the program just before graduation. 

“I would love for this to be a project more school districts decide to embrace,” Mitchell says. “It's such a great way for family physicians to offer a turnkey project to their communities that improves the health literacy of their young adults.”

Click here to learn more about the program and contact Samantha White at swhite@tafp.org to begin the process.

AAFP’s annual FUTURE conference for students and residents was held last week in Kansas City, Missouri, and the TAFP and Texas representation did not disappoint. Thousands of medical students and family medicine residents traveled from across the country to network and learn, including more than 130 from Texas. Check out some photos of TAFP in action here.

The TAFP Foundation funded 17 medical students as well as resident leaders to travel to Kansas City and experience all the conference had to offer. Additionally, 25 family medicine residency programs from Texas were in the expo hall, meeting students from across the country, hopefully recruiting them for the Texas family medicine physician workforce.

TAFP hosted a Texas-themed networking social Thursday evening for all Texas attendees and as always, we had lots of attendees and fun. Around 130 Texans attended including medical students, residents, and residency faculty, as well as students from elsewhere who are interested in Texas residency programs. This allowed for even more time outside the expo hall for networking and socializing. 

TAFP received a grant from the AAFP Foundation to throw the social through their Family Medicine Chapter Alliance program. Since 2006, the FMCA Grant Awards program has provided over $1.6 million to support projects of constituent chapters nationwide. Funding for the program is provided by generous donors. If you’d like to contribute, make a donation to the AAFP Foundation and select "Chapter Grants" as the designation. 

Friday morning, the Family Medicine Interest Group from the University of Texas Medical Branch John Sealy School of Medicine was honored as one of AAFP’s overall Program of Excellence Award winners. FMIGs give medical students the opportunity to learn more about the specialty of family medicine and teach them leadership skills. AAFP’s annual awards are given to groups for the work they do to promote family medicine at their medical schools and within their communities.

Three medical students and two residents from Texas attended FUTURE through the AAFP Foundation’s Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute. The year-long program works to increase the number of family medicine leaders in the healthcare workforce. 

• Rinka Ko, second-year student at UNT Health Fort Worth — Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine
• Meyer Maddox, fourth-year student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine
• Nima Rahman, fourth-year student at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin
• Sanjna Jagani, MD, PGY-2 at DHR Health Family Medicine Residency
• Erica Munoz, DO, PGY-2 at TIGMER Community-Based Family Medicine Residency Program

TAFP delegates attended their respective congresses, taking time to work on their resolution writing skills and gain experience serving in leadership roles. Thank you to these delegates for volunteering and attending.

• Kaylee Grigsby, McGovern Medical School, TAFP Student Delegate to AAFP Student Congress
• Magdalena Shen, Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, TAFP Student Alternate Delegate to AAFP Student Congress
• Mohit Sharma, MD, SHSU Family Medicine Huntsville, TAFP Resident Delegate to AAFP Resident Congress
• Olga Pudovka Gross, MD, TTUHSC Family Medicine Residency — Amarillo, TAFP Resident Alternate Delegate to AAFP Resident Congress

Additionally, Texas residents and students also had four posters accepted to the National Conference Poster Competition. Their posters were on display throughout the entirety of the conference, giving their research quite a bit of exposure.

• Impact of a Data-Driven, System-Based Intervention on Ambulatory Medication Harm (Research) Shana-Kay Lambert-Johnson, MD | Medical City Fort Worth
• Amigos En Medicina: A Student-Led Free Clinic Addressing Barriers to Osteoarthritis Care in a Predominantly Hispanic Community (Community Project) Larissa Garza and Arcadio Salinas | University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine
• Assessment of the Impact of Self-Regulated Learning Component on Student Knowledge Retention in Family Medicine Procedural Workshops (Educational Program) Nicole Kuo and Athena Berreles-Luna | UT Medical Branch 
• Building Capacity: Forensic Medical Evaluations in Central Texas (Educational Program) Nima Rahman | Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin

As always, the energy and excitement for the future of family medicine was palpable throughout the conference. TAFP enjoys seeing so many programs and students represent Texas at FUTURE every year and appreciate the time taken to interact with the Academy. 

Jennifer Fan, MD, MPH, FAAFP, never planned for an administrative mix-up to shape her career. But during a study abroad program in Argentina, she was accidentally placed with a family recovering from addiction at a drug rehabilitation center. The experience opened her eyes to the lasting effects of poverty and limited access to resources, inspiring her to pursue a career in medicine and, ultimately, family medicine. Fan completed a dual MD/MPH degree program at Paul Foster School of Medicine in El Paso and her family medicine residency at Baylor Scott and White in Round Rock. She also did a hospice and palliative medicine fellowship at Baylor Scott and White in Temple, the same program where she now serves as associate program director. Fan is also the associate program director for the MD/MPH program at Baylor College of Medicine.

Who or what inspired you to become a family physician?
I chose family medicine because I saw it as the field with the best ability to impact change in an individual’s health, a family’s health, and societal health. Drs. Charmaine Martin, Kathryn Horn, and Richard McCallum were great mentors to me during my medical school years, modeling service through volunteerism at free clinics and compassion combined with excellence at the bedside, and encouraging my involvement in organized medicine through the Texas Medical Association.

Physician well-being and helping your colleagues avoid burnout are passions of yours. Why is that work significant to you in your career?
Sustainability for ourselves is the sustainability and future of medicine. We have to be well ourselves in order to help others. My current team at work has taught me this — albeit sometimes the hard way — as we show up every day to give physically, emotionally, and spiritually to the sickest patients and their families. Some days I have to admit “I don’t got this” and need help from my team on tough cases. What I like the most about principles of well-being is being able to help medical students and residents see humility as a strength and human limitations as normal.

Why do you choose to be a TAFP member?
Medicine helps you impact change one patient at a time. Being involved with organized medicine enables you to enable positive change at the level of society. I also enjoy the camaraderie of other like-minded physicians.

What do you enjoy doing outside of medicine?
I recently obtained my 200-hour yoga teacher certificate and have started teaching classes for the residents after work hours in our hospital library. Additionally, I enjoy a weekly board game night with friends, international travel with my husband, and am trying to learn Mandarin with Duolingo.

TAFP’s Member of the Month program highlights Texas family physicians in TAFP News Now and on the TAFP website. We feature a biography and a Q&A with a different TAFP member each month and his or her unique approach to family medicine. If you know an outstanding family physician colleague who you think should be featured as a Member of the Month or if you’d like to tell your own story, nominate yourself or your colleague by contacting TAFP by email at tafp@tafp.org or by phone at (512) 329-8666. 

The Texas Medical Board now requires physicians renewing their licenses to submit documentation verifying U.S. citizenship or lawful presence before they can access the online renewal system. The board advises physicians to allow at least 15 business days — approximately three calendar weeks — for the documentation to be processed, making it important to begin well before your license expiration date.

According to the TMB, renewal applications remain pending until the required documentation has been reviewed and approved. Physicians will not be able to access the online renewal system until that review is complete.

Because document review is performed manually, physicians are encouraged to submit their documentation as early as possible. Waiting until the final weeks before a license expires could delay access to the renewal system and increase the risk of an expired license.

The TMB accepts a variety of documents to verify lawful presence. You can consult the board's guidance to determine which documents are acceptable and whether additional documentation is required.

The board also notes that some forms of documentation — such as a valid U.S. passport or a birth certificate submitted with an unexpired driver's license or Texas License to Carry — may exempt a physician from reverification at future renewals. Other forms of documentation may require reverification. 

Complete information about the lawful presence verification requirement, including acceptable documentation, submission instructions, and frequently asked questions, is available on the Texas Medical Board's website: Texas Medical Board: Lawful Presence Verification Requirement.