Beth Loney Elected to the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Family Physicians

CHICAGO – Beth Lawson Loney, a medical student at the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City, Kan., has been elected to the board of the directors of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). The AAFP represents nearly 94,000 physicians, residents and medical students nationwide. Loney 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 Oct. 3, which is held during the AAFP’s annual meeting.

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

A member of the AAFP since 2005, Loney has served as student chair on the Committee on Education and as student representative for the Commission on Governmental Advocacy. Most recently, she served as student chair for the 2007 AAFP National Conference for Family Medicine Residents and Students.

On the state level, Loney is an active member of the Kansas Academy of Family Physicians (KAFP) and serves on the Membership and Member Services Committee. She previously served on the KAFP’s board of directors as a student member.

At her academic institution, Loney served as co-president of the University of Kansas School of Medicine’s Family Medicine Interest Group when that organization won the AAFP’s Network Program of Excellence Award in Family Medicine Advocacy.

As the recipient of a research fellowship in 2005, Loney spent five weeks in Zambia conducting public health education programs dealing with HIV/AIDS. Since her return, she has been working with faculty and administration to develop an annual international health elective, allowing future medical students to carry on with this effort.

Loney is also highly involved with HIV/AIDS education in her local community. She is active with the Dramatic AIDS Education Project, which pairs medical students with professional actors in producing dramatic monologues to educate high school students on the transmission and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

Before entering medical school, Loney graduated with distinction from the University of Kansas School of Nursing, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing. She was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and spent two and a half years as a nurse at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Lawrence, Kan.

Loney will complete her medical degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in May 2008.