Inaugural Address:  Kathleen (Kate) Rowland, MD
November 9, 2024

I’m honored to be here today as the new president of the Illinois Academy of Family Physicians.
It was gracious of the academy to hold the meeting here in my hometown of Naperville. My husband Joe and I moved our family to Naperville 10 years ago. Joe is a physics professor at Lewis University in Romeoville, and our children are all in high school now. I hope you have a chance to spend some time here. My favorite sites include the library, the downtown coffee shop, and the forest preserves.

I didn’t always know I was going to be a family doctor. There were signs I was heading this way.

Does anyone remember the Fall Family Practice Forum? It was a precursor to Family Medicine Midwest, and I attended in the fall of 2002, as an M3 student. Clearly, some curiosity about family medicine was sparked early.

Now, 20 years into my career, I am still curious about family medicine. I work at Rush University, where I split my time between patient care at Rush University Family Physicians and teaching. I research the most effective ways to train future family physicians. As you may have been able to glean from today’s programming, I am hugely interested in the evidence available to inform primary care and always excited to talk about what I’ve read lately.

I am also aware of the many challenges of family medicine. We are feeling squeezed and maybe worried by corporatized medicine, our panels are bursting at the seams, the number of messages we get has risen by an absolute rate of 50% in the past 4 years. We witness the injustice our patients experience: the differential access to care, the disparate outcomes, the structures and barriers of racism, classicism, sexism. We are tired of signing charts at 8:30PM. We don’t know what to make of AI.

In the face of all that, I want to talk about what the Illinois Academy of Family Physicians is doing, and where I see us heading.
A few years ago the IAFP board updated our strategic plan, starting with evaluating our mission statement. Here it is. The task force had to decide whether it was still right. Was this still the core work of the IAFP?

It took us 5 meetings over 3 weeks, but we decided it’s exactly right. This is who we want to be.
Just as medicine is always changing, we’re always changing to meet it. The IAFP is working to improve its communication with members. We want you to know how we are working for you. I hope to be able to clearly communicate our
• Top three legislative priorities
• Available education opportunities
• Breadth of committee and Member Interest Groups

There will not be a quiz. We want you to know how this organization’s work benefits you, solves problems you face, and provides you opportunities to contribute to the specialty.

I’d like students, residents, and members who are new to practice to be able to identify at least one thing in this Venn diagram. More would be better. The IAFP is committed to expanding the degree of overlap here. We’re here to understand the problems better and to create programming that addresses them.

The academy does a lot of public health work intended to impact patient outcomes. We need to hear from you about the other public health priorities in your communities so we can focus and tailor our work to your needs. Feeling inspired by all these plans? Don’t forget to renew your membership. Maybe recruit a friend who isn’t a member or who has let their membership lapse.

I mentioned a minute ago all the challenges family physicians are facing right now. Sometimes our work feels far from the comprehensive, continuous, coordinated, first-contact care we are trained to provide.

One final thing to know about me is that I like to study history. A few years ago I spent a week at the at the Center for the History of Family Medicine, digging through the archives and reading about our specialty. I learned there that this has always been a difficult profession. There has never been a time when it was “easy” to be a family physician. This is what family physicians in the 1960’s were worried about. Today we are not anywhere we have not been before.

The basic truth is that people need- have always needed- will always need- trained generalists to care for them in their communities. That fact did not change with indoor plumbing, the automobile, or the internet. It won’t change with private equity, and it won’t change with AI. We’ll learn, we’ll advocate, we’ll take action, and we will do all of those things better as part of this strong organization.

The IAFP needs active, engaged members so we can be the voice of family physicians in Illinois. Thank you for the opportunity to be your president. I’m looking forward to sharing with you and hearing from you this year.