Fourth-year medical student Elizabeth Johnson was selected as a 2024 American Academy of Family Physicians Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute scholar.
Student Training to Become Leader in Family Medicine
By Dirk Hoffman
Published September 20, 2024
Elizabeth Johnson, a fourth-year medical student at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, is one of only 30 people in the country selected to participate in a year-long program aimed at creating future leaders in the field of family medicine.
She is among the family medicine residents and medical students named as scholars in the 2024 American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute (ELI).
The AAFP defines emerging leaders as individuals who have shown historical aptitude for leadership and have exhibited to others a strong potential for leadership.
Capstone Project Final Goal of Program
As part of the ELI, the selected residents and students attended the AAFP National Conference Aug. 1-4 in Kansas City, Missouri, to learn more about family medicine, explore residency programs, make connections, and learn about leadership opportunities with the Student and Resident Congress.
After the conference, they participated in in-depth workshops in one of three leadership tracks:
- policy and public health
- personal and practice
- philanthropic and mission driven
The scholars will develop and complete a leadership project related to their track and an assigned mentor will help them navigate the process, with the final deliverable due at the end of March 2025.
Monthly virtual project management sessions and/or content releases are conducted to help scholars further develop their leadership skills and refine their projects.
Johnson’s mentor is Mary F. Campagnolo, MD, MBA, a family physician in Bordentown, New Jersey, who is president-elect of the AAFP.
Johnson says she learned of the program at a Student National Medical Association conference earlier this year and was encouraged to apply after expressing her interest in sports medicine and her passion for leadership and advocacy.
“I am passionate about sports medicine and preventative and lifestyle health, with a focus on nutrition and fitness to promote health and improve health outcomes,” she says.
Along with submitting a letter of recommendation, the application process involved writing an essay identifying areas of concerns in health care and how Johnson plans to address them with the work she is currently doing.
Accessing Pool of Extensive New Resources
Johnson says the AAFP conference exceeded her expectations.
“I feel overjoyed and elated to be one of the few students selected,” she says. “I have been given the opportunity to access a pool of extensive resources, mentors and develop a project around the things I am passionate about.”
Johnsons says she got the chance to meet with, network and learn from peers and leaders in the field at the conference.
Among the highlights for her was “meeting with different programs and learning about the different options and resources available, helping me narrow my list of possible projects.”
Johnson chose to pursue the policy and public health track and has narrowed her list to two choices for her capstone project.
“One focuses on developing a curriculum to improve social cultural competency care that addresses nutritional counseling and recommendations specific to immigrants and refugee populations,” she says.
“The other is creating an app that integrates assessment and education tools in different languages into the electronic medical records used in clinical settings that'll help to improve health literacy in immigrants and refugee populations.”