As 2024 draws to a close, with old man winter’s arrival just two days away and the holiday season upon us, it is a good a time to reflect on the past year at ACPM.
It has been a busy, productive and transformative year for ACPM membership and the organization. Many of us attended our annual conference, Preventive Medicine 2024, in April, which is always wonderful and well attended. We had over 600 ACPM members and other colleagues present in Washington, D.C., for fellowship, meeting with Congressional leaders and to show how preventive medicine continues to work to transform health and health care in the U.S.In October, the Dr. Daniel S. Blumenthal Award was bestowed upon four organizations in recognition of their efforts to promote health equity. Representatives from the National Medical Association, National Hispanic Medical Association, National Council of Asian Pacific Islander Physicians and the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin accepted the award in recognition of their organizations’ exemplary work.
In addition, the College’s journals, AJPM and AJPM Focus were sold and those monies will be used to strengthen the financial foundation of the College, even as we will still have access to these journals as a membership benefit. And in July we had a transition in leadership, as Melissa Ferrari, CAE, took over the reins of the ACPM as our Interim-CEO.
Throughout the year we also focused on meeting the needs of the membership, through lobbying for increased residency funding, promoting our Vaccine Confidence campaign, combatting misinformation and disinformation, getting grants for our work and addressing the alarming rise in measles cases nationwide. We also focused on Leadership in Medicine and Public Health, addressed cybersecurity challenges in health care, highlighted the shortage of preventive medicine physicians in the military and also across the country and by putting patient safety into focus, even as we seek to put prevention into practice.
We also had a presidential election, and while we know that as a non-profit organization ACPM needs to be apolitical and work with each new administration for the best interests of the American population, sometimes the light of the message can be lost in the heat of the discussion. Nevertheless, we must be pragmatic and persevere in the important work that ACPM has been doing for more than 70 years!
Before I sign off for the year, I would like to ask you to please:
Nominate a member of the College or a leader in preventive medicine for excellence in service to the field for an ACPM award, to acknowledge the passion of both members and nonmembers in the areas of preventive medicine and public health. The nomination period for 2025 closes January 10. Please visit here to start your nomination.
Contribute generously to the College’s various award programs, scholarship funds and giving campaigns. We need your help to continue these programs that help develop the next generation of preventive medicine leaders in the College:
- Board of Regents Scientific Excellence Fund
- Future Leaders of Preventive Medicine
- Annual Campaign
I will close with the last portion of President Lincoln’s second inaugural address from about 160 years ago. Let us go forth, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Mirza I. Rahman, MD, MPH, FAAFP, FACPM
President