Plan now to join your colleagues in Orlando, Fla., for the 2004 Annual Assembly. This year's event will have a decidedly international feel: It will be held in conjunction with the 17th World Conference of Family Doctors, sponsored by the World Organization of Family Doctors, or Wonca. The AAFP meeting begins with the Congress of Delegates Oct. 11 – 13 in the Grand Ballroom of the Rosen Centre Hotel. The Scientific Assembly, with nearly all of its CME sessions at the Orange County Convention Center, will be Oct. 13 – 17.
 Dale Moquist, M.D., chair of the AAFP's delegation to the AMA, testifies in an AAFP reference committee about the AMA's perspective on clinical skills exams for all U.S. medical students. |
Stand up, speak out
Air your views about issues important to your patients, your colleagues and your specialty during reference committee hearings Oct. 11 – 12. Then track the progress of these issues as they wend through the Congress of Delegates, the Academy's highest policy-making body.
The Congress also elects new AAFP officers and Board members. To see who's running for office, go to http://members.aafp.org/members/congress/candidates and log in using your AAFP ID number. You can ask questions of the candidates via the "Question/Answer Forums" and view their responses online at the site.
CME goes international
The 2004 Scientific Assembly will boast the high-caliber CME sessions you've come to expect -- only this year, you may be soaking up that new knowledge and sharpening those clinical skills in the company of family doctors from Nigeria, Vietnam, New Zealand or the Netherlands. Because registrants of either meeting have access to all free educational sessions at both meetings, attendees can share practice tips and clinical insights with a diverse mix of family medicine and general practice colleagues from around the world.
CME offerings at Assembly range from highly pragmatic practice redesign courses to interactive clinical updates and technical skills workshops. Topics include electronic health record systems implementation, sports medicine emergencies and much more.
For more about the Scientific Assembly, go to http://www.aafp.org/assembly.xml and click on "2004 Orlando: Conference Information." For more about the Wonca world conference, go to http://www.wonca2004.org/x14654.xml.
Focus on the future
Two other events at this year's Annual Assembly deserve special mention.
An Oct. 10 town hall meeting will highlight the Future of Family Medicine report and recommendations released this spring.
And this year's joint AAFP/Wonca opening ceremony on Oct. 13 promises another glimpse into the future, when keynote speaker Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute, takes the stage. His talk, "Genomics and the Family Physician: Realizing the Potential," will kick off the 2005 Annual Clinical Focus on genomics. Interestingly, the 2007 Wonca world conference will feature genomics as its theme.
FP Report is published by the AAFP
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Copyright © 2004 by American Academy of Family Physicians.