Jennifer Hyer Elected to the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Family Physicians

WASHINGTON – Jennifer Hyer, a medical student at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, has been elected to the board of the directors of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). The AAFP represents more than 94,000 physicians, residents and medical students nationwide. Hyer was elected to a one-year term by the National Congress of Student Members and was confirmed by the Congress of Delegates, the governing body of the AAFP. She will be installed at the Delegate’s Dinner Sept. 28, which is held during the AAFP’s annual meeting.

As a student member of the AAFP board of directors, Hyer is responsible for representing the interests and opinions of the National Congress of Student Members to the AAFP board and Congress of Delegates.

After growing up in Manitowoc, Wis., Hyer graduated with highest academic distinction from the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minn., where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in Justice and Peace Studies. While she pursued her undergraduate degree, Hyer traveled extensively throughout the United States and internationally. She completed study abroad programs in Northern Ireland, El Salvador, Guatemala and Cuba. Hyer then spent one year serving as a full-time volunteer with the AmeriCorps Volunteer-In-Service-To-America program, where she coordinated a city-wide tobacco prevention program and clean indoor air initiative in Sitka, Alaska.

Hyer graduated with a master’s degree in public health with an emphasis in health management and policy from Portland State University in June 2006, receiving the Award of Excellence for top graduating student. She will complete her medical degree from Oregon Health Sciences University in June 2007. Because of her passion for rural health care, Hyer aspires to become a family physician in rural Alaska upon completion of her residency in 2010.

A member of the AAFP since 2001, Hyer has served on the Committee on Rural Health and the Special Issues Reference Committee. She also has served on the AAFP Leadership Task Force as student delegate to the AAFP Congress of Delegates. Most recently, she served as student chair for the 2006 AAFP National Conference for Family Medicine Residents and Students.

On the state level, Hyer is an active member of the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians, the Oregon Medical Association, the American Public Health Association and the Association of Students for the Underserved. On the local level, Hyer volunteers at Wallace Clinical Concern, a free health clinic, where she cares for indigent patients. Hyer is also active in the Family Medicine Interest Group at Oregon Health Sciences University.

Hyer spent the summer of 2006 researching rural workforce issues at the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care in Washington, D.C. While there, she worked on national initiatives to analyze predictors of rural recruitment and retention, as well as the impact of medical school expansion on the rural and underserved workforce.