Kansas Physician Elected to the American Academy of Family Physicians Board of Directors

SAN DIEGO – Jennifer Bacani, M.D., a family physician resident from Wichita, Kan., has been elected to the board of directors of the American Academy of Family Physicians. The AAFP represents more than 93,000 physicians and medical students nationwide. Bacani was elected to a one-year term by the National Congress of Family Medicine Residents and confirmed by the AAFP’s governing body, the Congress of Delegates.

As the resident member of the board of directors, Bacani is responsible for representing the interests and opinions of the National Congress of Family Medicine Residents to the AAFP Board of Directors and Congress of Delegates. In addition, she will advocate on behalf of family physicians and patients nationwide to inspire positive change in the U.S. health care system.

Bacani currently is in training at the Via Christi Family Medicine Residency Program in Wichita. Currently a chief resident at Via Christi, Bacani also serves as resident recruitment coordinator and served as a peer-selected representative for the residency review committee site visit in 2007.

A member of the AAFP since 2002, Bacani was the AAFP resident representative to the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Board of Directors in 2007-2008. She also is active in the Kansas Academy of Family Physicians, serving as the resident and student representative to the KAFP Board of Directors and as the state’s delegate to the AAFP’s Resident Congress of Delegates in 2008 and the Student Congress of Delegates in 2005.

Bacani graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. In 2006, she completed her doctor of medicine degree at the University of Kansas School of Medicine.

While in medical school, Bacani was the Family Medicine Interest Group representative to KAFP and completed an international medicine rotation in Guatemala. She was involved in community leadership and diversity activities, serving on the university’s Diversity Advisory Council, as president of Students Educating and Advocating for Diversity, and as a diversity educator for first-year medical students’ orientation. She was active in numerous campus organizations, including the Medical Student Assembly, the Asian American Medical Students Association and the Catholic Medical Student Group.

In 2008, Bacani received the AAFP/Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Excellence in Graduate Medical Education, the KU School of Medicine Resident Teaching Award, and the A.J. Wray, M.D., Award for the Outstanding Second-Year Resident. Previously, she had received the Henry H. Loewen, M.D., Award for the Outstanding First-Year Resident. In 2004, Bacani received the University of Kansas Medical Center Executive Vice Chancellor’s Diversity Award.

Since 2007, Bacani has been involved in a research project to identify cultural barriers to health care and to develop a curriculum teaching cultural competency to residents. Her other research projects focused on the necessary number of implanted cells for in vitro fertilization, and on attitudes and beliefs about body image as they relate to obesity.