Congress of Delegates Convenes Oct. 8-10 in New Orleans

Check Out AAFP Candidates' Website

July 05, 2018 03:30 pm News Staff – Make plans to head to the Big Easy for this year's AAFP Congress of Delegates (COD), which will meet Oct. 8-10 in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel. The COD will convene in conjunction with the AAFP Family Medicine Experience (FMX), which is scheduled for Oct. 9-13.

During the COD's reference committee hearings on Oct. 8, AAFP members will have an opportunity to share their views on resolutions up for consideration and, thus, help shape new Academy policies. Delegates will vote on those resolutions in subsequent business sessions. On Oct. 10, the delegates will elect AAFP officers and members of the Board of Directors from the 10 candidates vying for office.

But before then, members can review each candidate's personal statement and find out more about them -- what they've accomplished and what they consider important -- by exploring the 2018 AAFP Candidates webpage.

From there, you can link to each candidate's individual page, where you can access that candidate's

personal campaign statement,
contact information,
biography and
curriculum vitae.

Be sure to have your member ID information handy; you'll need it to access these pages.

If you find you share common ground with certain candidates on issues that matter to you, your practice and your patients, consider asking your chapter delegates to the COD to vote for those candidates.

In addition, although the AAFP's Candidate Campaign Activities and Rules document(401 KB PDF) states that candidates for Academy offices may not use official AAFP social media channels (e.g., AAFP Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+) for campaigning purposes, candidates are welcome to use the official COD event hashtag -- #aafpcod -- in any messages sent from their personal Twitter accounts, including campaign messages. Academy members with Twitter accounts can then use that COD hashtag to follow campaign activities and other events leading up to the election.

Further information about this year's COD is available online, including links to a tentative schedule of official activities, information on housing and registration, and a listing of resolutions submitted to date -- including measures on revamping family medicine board certification, decreasing maternal mortality and reducing gun violence, among others.

More information about AAFP FMX is available online. Watch the video below to catch glimpses of activities at last year's FMX.