Jason E. Marker, MD, MPA, FAAFP
Candidate for director
Personal statement
Family medicine's greatest strength is its adaptability—to local standards of care and to the financial, social and political realities of health care. Over time, we each develop a set of core beliefs that shape how we practice medicine. Here are a few of mine:
Physician autonomy and patient-centered care — The sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship must be protected from policies that insert third parties into clinical decision-making. Evidence-based, compassionate care—delivered equitably and without regard to a patient’s standing in society—is the floor, not the ceiling, of what we owe every patient.
Primary care, scope and the care team — Primary care should be liberated from fee-for-service. Only full-spectrum, community-invested family physicians lower the total cost of care, and our residencies should continue to train physicians capable of meeting the needs of any community. Mid-level providers play a valuable supporting role in appropriate, well-supervised settings.
Rural healthcare — Rural family physicians deserve enhanced reimbursement, fewer administrative hurdles and an AAFP that fights for their survival through rural training tracks, community-based medical education and recruiting pathways that bring physicians to the communities that need them most.
Physician well-being and workforce — Burnout is a solvable structural problem. Our future depends on the leadership we bring to making the specialty sustainable, rewarding and visible to the next generation of physicians. I have done this work.
Reproductive and gender-related care — I support unfettered access to all legal health care, including abortion, medical aid in dying and adult gender-affirming care. I also support the upstream investments that reduce their need: accessible contraception, parental leave, enhanced palliative care, and stronger health education for children and adolescents.
Technology and EHRs — Our current electronic health records were built to maximize billing, not to support patient care or physician efficiency. We need portable, standardized, intuitive systems designed around closing care gaps and giving physicians their time back.
Social determinants and population health — Climate, housing, food insecurity, social media misuse and community violence are health issues. Family physicians are often the first to see their effects and should be empowered and paid to address them.
AAFP member engagement — The AAFP should be indispensable to members at every career stage—from medical students discovering the specialty to retired physicians who shaped it. New physicians in particular deserve targeted support for the practical realities of starting and sustaining a practice.
Some of you will agree with many of these, and some of you will disagree with a few. That is as it should be. Every patient deserves a physician whose beliefs are a good fit for them. When a society of physicians is allowed to practice in a plurality of practice styles and scopes, we can then do our best for the communities we serve.
I look forward to conversations with you about these points when we are together in Nashville (or sooner!) Understanding clearly where our beliefs about the practice of medicine intersect and where they diverge creates the space for our specialty to evolve.
For seven generations, the Marker family has called the farming communities of northern Indiana home. During his 15 years in private practice, Jason Marker, MD, FAAFP, drove past the site of his family's original 19th-century homestead on his way to work each morning—and cared for patients whose family trees had been intertwined with his own for all of those generations. That sense of place and purpose has shaped everything about how he practices, leads and serves.
Dr. Marker is an associate director and clinic medical director at the Memorial Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program in South Bend, Indiana—a role he has been in since 2017. Practicing a full breadth of family medicine—including obstetrics, inpatient medicine, nursing home care, colonoscopy, vasectomy and house calls—positioned Dr. Marker well for his transition to residency education. His career included both extensive office precepting and formal teaching, which he has done at the local, state, national and international level.
Dr. Marker holds three degrees from Indiana University—a B.S. in biology (cum laude, '94), an M.D. ('98), and a Master of Public Affairs ('02), the latter completed concurrently with his residency training. That foundation in public policy has informed his approach to organizational leadership ever since.
His engagement in family medicine governance began as a medical student and has never stopped. He has served multiple terms on the Indiana AFP Board of Directors—as a student, resident and at-large member—and is a past president of the IAFP. He currently serves on the IAFP Board of Directors, as IAFP alternate delegate to the AAFP Congress of Delegates, and as treasurer of the IAFP Foundation. He has previously served as the new physician member of the AAFP Board of Directors, and is a past president of the AAFP Foundation.
Dr. Marker has spent the last decade expanding the leadership development and well-being offerings of the AAFP. As architect of both the AAFP Foundation's Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute and the AAFP's Leading Physician Well-Being Program, he has worked to strengthen and expand the specialty's leadership pathway and to bring physician well-being from conversation to curriculum. When the AAFP sought to enter the CME podcasting space, they reached out to Dr. Marker to help build the concept behind Inside Family Medicine’s top-ranked CME On the Go podcast, which he has co-hosted since its first episode.
Dr. Marker is an AAFP Advocacy Ambassador, a contributor to the IAFP and AAFP PACs, and a regular presence at the Indiana General Assembly. He and his wife have endowed a scholarship within the AAFP Foundation's Emerging Leader Institute and are active philanthropists across the arts, education, food insecurity and environmental conservation.
Few family physicians have made such rich investments in clinical, educational, philanthropic and organizational leadership. Dr. Marker has sustained this work for 25 years by never losing sight of what matters most—the patients he serves in a community that has made him who he is.