Jason E. Marker, MD, MPA, FAAFP
Director
Dr. Marker supports physicians, patients and learners through his leadership in clinic, education, philanthropy and professional organizations.
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.
From full-scope practice to residency education
Dr. Marker is 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 Board of Directors of the Indiana Academy of Family Physicians (IAFP)—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.
Expanding leadership and learning opportunities
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 Marker to help build the concept behind the Inside Family Medicine podcast’s top-ranked CME On the Go series, which he co-hosted from its first episode, in 2024, to 2026.
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.