FMX speaker played vital role in AAFP leadership programs

Aug. 20, 2025, David Mitchell — At this point in his career, Jason Marker, MD, MPA, FAAFP, doesn’t have to worry about making his mark in family medicine. The question is, where might he make his next mark on our specialty?

“ELI widens the leadership pipeline for the Academy and family medicine,” said Marker, who noted that alumni of the program have gone on to leadership roles in their communities and state chapters, and some have returned to the program as faculty. “The leadership in our specialty that has come out of ELI has been impressive.”

The program provides $1,000 scholarships for 30 students and residents to attend FUTURE to learn more about family medicine, explore residency programs, network and participate in the student and resident congresses. Immediately following FUTURE, participants attend the Emerging Leader Institute for in-depth workshops. They are paired with family physician mentors, who provide guidance and support on a year-long project in one of three leadership tracks: policy and public health; personal and practice; and philanthropic and mission-driven.

Marker was chair of ELI for the program’s first six years. He is a faculty member and has overseen the yearly development of a faculty pool of proven AAFP leaders since ELI’s inception. Current AAFP Board member Brent Smith, MD, MSc, MLS, FAAFP, succeeded Marker in 2021, and Christina Kelly, MD, FAAFP, associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the Uniformed Services University; and Kim Yu, MD, FAAFP, the ABFM’s national strategy consultant for the ABFM’s PRIME Registry, moved into the role as co-chairs this year. Marker said 2026 will be his last year as the program’s lead faculty.

“I’m looking forward to becoming a scholar mentor in the program,” he said. “That’s the logical next step for me. It’s important for the Academy to think about succession planning in key roles among physician volunteers. Moving key leaders is important to keep ideas fresh.”

The success of ELI opened another opportunity for Marker, who was asked to serve as the general program chair of the AAFP’s Leading Physician Well-being program, which launched in 2020.

“The AAFP had received a grant and had a sense of what the program needed to look like,” said Marker, who developed the program’s model, assembled the faculty team and worked with Academy staff to build the program. “I knew about the importance of well-being, but it had not been a major focus of my leadership work.”

Leading Physician Well-being is a 10-month certificate program that develops family physicians’ knowledge and skills in three areas: leadership development, performance improvement and physician well-being. The program provides peer support, networking, and CME. Participants complete a system-level performance improvement project on a well-being topic in their home community as a part of the program.

“If you look at how we do ELI, it’s easy to see echoes of it brought to larger scale in LPW,” Marker said. “Both programs have elements of didactics around core content in three areas with practical project-focused work to lock in the skills that have been learned.”

While ELI participants work with a mentor and present their one-year projects at FUTURE, LPW participants are expected to engage mentors and stakeholders in their practices, and communities and share what they learn with their cohort.

Like ELI, Marker said his current role in LPW will be winding down.

“We’re thinking very hard about leadership,” he said. “We’ve changed every year, looking for new areas of teaching to keep the program fresh and being creative to bring new things to the curriculum. Part of smart program development is leadership succession. I’ve been blessed to launch and lead two amazing programs for the AAFP, but there are a lot of great family medicine leaders out there and it is their time to lead these programs.”

Marker isn’t afraid of change. After residency, he opened his own practice in tiny Wyatt, Indiana, where he practiced full-scope family medicine for 15 years in a community where his family has lived since before the Civil War.

As Marker’s children grew up and moved out, he was pondering his own next steps professionally. He seriously considered transitioning to a direct primary care model but instead turned to education. Nearly 90 students and residents had rotated through his rural practice, so the pivot to full-time teaching came naturally.

“I love working with new young doctors,” said Marker, who also is the residency clinic’s medical director and is a clinical assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine. “They’re so eager. They see all the potential our specialty can bring to disparate communities. That keeps me feeling young and energized. It makes it easy for me to stay connected to my well-being work because it reminds me of my ‘why’ every day when I go to work.”

Marker also is enjoying teaching his peers. He’s working on the second season of the CME On the Go series of the Inside Family Medicine podcast with co-hosts Lauren Brown-Berchtold, MD, FAAFP, program director for the Valley Consortium for Medical Education Family Medicine Residency in Modesto, California, and Tamaan Osbourne-Roberts MD, MBA, FAAFP, DiplABLM, DABOM, of Aurora, Colorado.

“We had been talking about the fact that the things we teach in LPW could be interesting podcast topics, and it grew from there,” Marker said. “It’s been fun.”

Marker also will be faculty for the Family Medicine Experience, which is Oct. 5-9 in Anaheim, California. He will present a session on leadership skills for introverts with LPW faculty and Cheshire Medical Center-Dartmouth Health Family Medicine associate program director KrisEmily McCrory, MD, MS, Med Ed, FAAFP.

That session was created based on feedback from LPW participants.

“We heard, ‘I need to do these things, but it’s hard for me because I’m an introvert,’” he said. “There’s a need for this, and I’m excited to teach it. It’s fun to have a room of 200 people where no two people are sitting next to each other and to draw them into a rich conversation in a safe environment that helps to open up some of their many leadership skills.”

Marker also will moderate an FMX panel discussion focused on diverse career options in family medicine with peers representing work in academic medicine, public health, federally qualified health centers, direct primary care and independent practice.

“It’s an opportunity for people to hear how we got to the different settings we’re in,” he said. “We can help people navigate to their sweet spot in family medicine. I see it as encouragement to residents and new physicians that you can get what you want in family medicine.”

You can find more about FMX, including registration information, here.