CAFP Focuses on JEDI Work Shannon Connolly, MD Melissa Campos, MD prioritized. However, it soon became clear that a temporary task force would not suffice. If the CAFP was to change the culture of our specialty such that future generations will consider health equity work as vital as anything else we do in medicine, we needed an enduring body to advance this work. Last year the Board approved the new, permanent JEDI Committee, and the following is a report on some of the work we have been doing. One of the first projects of the JEDI Committee was to understand and gather baseline information on CAFP leadership and propose strategies for advancing diversity at the CAFP. In 2023, a 14-question survey was electronically sent to the CAFP’s Board of Directors and Alternates, members of the CAFPs committees, chapter presidents, NCCL Delegation members, the Student and Resident Council, and staff. The survey included questions about self-identified race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, practice setting, disability status, and languages spoken. Of the 165 surveys that were sent out, 154 were completed, resulting in a 93 percent completion rate. Three years ago, the CAFP Board of Directors met to develop a strategic plan. It was a weekend that built upon months of planning and preparation. The Board engaged in deep conversations about why we practice family medicine, what the CAFP’s role could be in healing society’s suffering, and how we might lead healthcare transformation. We listened to each other and challenged one another to set an aspirational agenda for our professional organization. We considered complex issues such as why we don’t have an adequate family medicine workforce and why the house of medicine struggles so much to achieve health equity. The strategic plan that came out of this created a clear directive to engage in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) work. This was the beginning of the CAFP’s first JEDI task force. Over the next year, the newly formed task force provided recommendations on how to enshrine these priorities into the very structure of our organization, so this work is enduring and 12 California Family Physician Summer 2024 "Race is a social construct that is used to group people based on physical characteristics, behavioral patterns, and geographic location. Racial categories are broad, poorly defined, vary by country and change over time. People who are assigned to the same racial category do not necessarily share the same genetic ancestry; therefore, there are no underlying genetic or biological factors that unite people within the same racial category. By using race as a biological marker for disease states or as a variable in medical diagnosis and treatment, the true health status of a patient may not be accurately assessed, which can lead to racial health disparities. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) opposes the use of race as a proxy for biology or genetics in clinical evaluation and management and in research. The AAFP encourages clinicians and researchers to investigate alternative indicators to race to stratify medical risk factors for disease states." (AAFP July 2020 BOD) (AAFP 2020 Congress of Delegates)
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