Family physicians focus on trust, prevention, patient care at FMX

In an era when social media and partisan news sources have sown misinformation, and artificial intelligence has made it more difficult to discern fact from fiction, it can be hard for people to know whom they can trust.

There is an exception.

“When you look at who retains trust, it’s you,” Dave Chokshi, MD, MSc, chair of the Common Health Coalition, told family physicians during a mainstage event Oct. 22 at the 2026 Family Medicine Experience in Nashville, Tennessee. “It’s the people gathered here today. Eighty-six percent of Americans of all political stripes trust their own primary care physician when it comes to health care information.”

How that information is presented is key. Dr. Chokshi said physicians should drop the dated “Trust the science,” argument and listen to—and alleviate—patient concerns about vaccines and other health care issues.

He also said primary care physicians can help “forge the consensus that has eluded us,” on vaccines in recent years. That need to restore trust between physicians and the broader public—and tactics that help do so—came up in many other sessions throughout FMX.

Dr. Chokshi, an internist at Bellevue Hospital, was commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Six million New Yorkers were vaccinated during the pandemic, but Dr. Chokshi acknowledged that mistakes were made regarding communications to the public. He held more than 200 press conferences, following risk communications strategies.

It didn’t work.

“I’d say, ‘Here’s what we know, and here’s what we don’t know yet,’” he said. “I’d pick up the New York Post and none of that was in the story. We have to look for places where you can more directly connect with the people you’re serving.”

Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS, executive director of the Infodemiology Initiative at The Public Good Projects, said health professionals need training in communications because the next health crisis is coming.

“A lot of us weren’t trained in communications, based on the outdated belief we were going to be communicating with our peer group and not the public,” said Malaty Rivera, who also is a fellow at Boston Children's Hospital Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator and a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. “COVID-19 isn’t the last pandemic of our lifetime. We can’t treat science as an afterthought. You can’t treat it as, ‘If you build it, they will come.’”

Malaty Rivera said it’s unsettling that “everything is subjective and up for debate.”

“I’m old enough to remember when vaccines were a purple issue,” she said. “It was a unifying topic. Investing in vaccines outside of America was good for everyone. We’re having conversations that bewilder me. Global health security has been hijacked by the ‘America first’ narrative, but a healthy America requires a vaccinated world. It requires making sure a disease over there doesn’t become a disease over here, because it can happen in one plane flight.”

When a child in Texas died of measles in February 2025, it was the first measles death in the United States in a decade.

Andrea Love, PhD, founder of ImmunoLogic and executive director of the Lyme Disease Foundation, said vaccines are a “victim of their own success.”

“If there is uptake of the vaccine, people don’t see consequences of the illness,” she said. “People haven’t lived through an era when preventable diseases are a leading cause of death. We’re seeing the consequences (of falling vaccine rates) in real time. It’s saddening.”

Instead of telling the public to “follow the science,” Love said, health professionals should explain the science. That means public health initiatives need communication plans.

“We need to give people a peek behind the curtain instead of believing they’re going to fall in line because we said so,” she said.

Building rapport with patients is key, she said.

“People trust people they perceive to be like them,” she said. “If you want to have a back-and-forth discussion, establish trust first. You want people to feel comfortable asking good-faith questions.”

Malaty Rivera said those relationships are even more important with the spread of artificial intelligence.

“People can’t do a Google search without getting AI prompts,” she said. “AI is going to be like a primary care doctor because people don’t have care. It’s an indictment of our broken health care system. People are looking for answers.”

AAFP CEO and EVP Shawn Martin, who moderated the panel discussion, pointed out that when the CDC altered its vaccine recommendation process, family physicians filled the void.

“When questions emerged about how evidence-based vaccine recommendations would move forward, family physicians stepped up,” he said. “Through the AAFP's leadership of the adult immunization schedule, physician reviewers, clinical experts and member leaders worked alongside partners including the Vaccine Integrity Project, the American Medical Association and other leading medical societies to carefully review evidence and develop recommendations clinicians can trust.”

During the main stage event, Martin praised the winners of service awards that were presented earlier this week at the Congress of Delegates, and he highlighted the dozen residents who were recipients of the Award for Excellence in Graduate Medical Education.

The theme of trust in science set by the Oct. 22 mainstage event was reflected across FMX.

Earlier this year, the administration altered the recommended childhood schedule for the HPV vaccine to one dose, even though no HPV vaccine is FDA-licensed for a single-dose regimen.

The AAFP and other medical societies did not change their recommendations, leaving parents with questions.

“I’m seeing more and more hesitancy about vaccines in general and this vaccine in particular,” said Mary Gallagher, MD, FAAFP, clinical assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who practices in Tappahannock, Virginia. “Parents are saying there’s so much controversy that many want to defer vaccinating their kids or let their kids decide when they are older. They’re nervous about it.”

That’s why Dr. Gallagher attended an FMX CME session about HPV vaccines that was presented by Amy Wiser, MD, FAAFP, clinical associate professor and associate program director at the University of Iowa. (The session is part of FMX On Demand.)

“I wanted to get more information and talking points to increase uptake among my patients who are eligible for this vaccine,” Dr. Gallagher said. “I got more than I hoped for in terms of learning about the characteristics of the virus itself, how the vaccine works and the political landscape that is affecting uptake.”

When Paul Wilson, MD, of Clinton, Maryland, talks about weight loss, his patients listen.

“I have a lot of credibility because I have patients who knew me when I was this big,” said Dr. Wilson, stretching his arms wide, after a meeting of the AAFP’s Lifestyle Medicine Member Interest Group. “I had patients who didn’t recognize me. They can see there is a path. My story gives them hope that this is doable.”

Dr. Wilson’s weight had climbed north of 400 pounds when he was diagnosed with a congenital heart valve defect. Before he could have it corrected, he needed to lose weight and control his blood pressure. He lost more than 185 pounds through diet and exercise.

“No shots, no pills, no surgery,” Dr. Wilson said.

Ten years later, he’s maintained a healthy weight. But he wanted to do more.

“My goal was to get lean,” Dr. Wilson said.

Three years ago, he heard family physician Elizabeth Polk, MD, (who also spoke in Thursday’s MIG meeting) give a talk on lifestyle medicine, which emphasizes plant-based nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, social connection and avoiding harmful substances.

Wilson already had adopted many of these ideas, but now he had a formal roadmap to follow and share with his patients. Two years ago, he took another step forward, hiring his patient and former professional football player Anthony Chesley as his personal trainer.

“I’m 65,” he said, “and I’ve never been more fit.”

Jonisha Brown, MD, FAAFP, published multiple articles in AAFP journals while an STFM fellow in 2022, but her writing stopped when she went back to school to earn a master’s degree in public health. At FMX, Dr. Brown saw that door reopen during an informational session about participating with the AAFP journals in roles including peer reviewer and author.

“I came to this session to get reconnected,” said Dr. Brown, an assistant professor of family and community medicine at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “When I was a fellow, I was ushered into the journals through a mentor who edited my work. It was nice to hear how to start from the beginning. It was good to hear about peer review. I was a teacher before I went to med school, so that might be where I start.”

AFP and FPM are the nation’s most-read family medicine journals, garnering more than 27 million page views per year.

AFP editor-in-chief Sumi Sexton, MD, FAAFP, said during the session that the journal is recruiting mentors and mentees for a formalized mentorship program to develop authors for journal departments like Medicine by the Numbers and Cochrane for Clinicians. Interested members can learn more by contacting the journal​.

The Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine presented four sessions at FMX Oct. 22, including one on integrative health and team-based care.

Attendee Melissa Martin, MD, FAAFP, a direct primary care physician from Laredo, Texas, said integrative medicine’s approach of spending more time with patients resonated with her.

“Our patients want more than just, ‘Take this med and come back in a few months,’” she said. “They don’t feel listened to or that we are getting to the foundation of their issues. Primary care has limited time (with patients). Integrative medicine and lifestyle medicine are getting back to the patient-physician relationship and spending more time with them, being less paternalistic and having shared goals. And it’s evidence based; we know the benefits of nutrition and exercise. I love that this is coming to the forefront.”