2010 is a great year for Texas at AAFP’s Congress of Delegates meeting

Goertz installed as president, Mabry re-elected to Speaker, Deuser wins award

posted 10.07.10

Many TAFP leaders and staff traveled to Denver, Colo., for the 2010 American Academy of Family Physicians Congress of Delegates meeting last week. Among the achievements earned by TAFP members, Roland A. Goertz, M.D., M.B.A., of Waco, was inaugurated as the 2010-2011 AAFP president; Leah Raye Mabry, M.D., R.Ph., of San Antonio, was elected to a third term as Speaker of the AAFP Congress of Delegates; and Tamra Deuser, M.D., of Flower Mound, was awarded the 2010 AAFP Public Health Award.

Goertz previously served three years as a director on the AAFP Board and one year as president-elect. As AAFP president, he will advocate on behalf of family physicians and patients nationwide to inspire positive change in the U.S. health care system. In his inaugural address, he told the audience of family physicians, “It is our time.”

Reflecting on family physicians’ long history of leading change, he recognized the long road Academy members must travel in the coming years as they deal with new realities in health care, politics, and the economy, each of which create “incredible opportunities” for the specialty, he said.

“I enter this period with incredible hope and belief that it is now our time,” Goertz told the assembly. “We know that the essence of what we do cannot ever be replaced by a test or a procedure of any kind. We know that coordination of care is valuable, and that we do it best. We know there are volumes of data from excellent studies that champion our value to patients. We know the public wants and needs who we are and what we do. And we, more than anyone else, know the value a personal patient relationship has; it makes all the difference in the world.

“If we want it to be our time we must stand together and be willing to go toe to toe with anyone else for the sake of our patients, for our profession, for our families, and for our communities. We need to understand that it is our time, we need to believe that it is our time, and we need to act like it is our time.”

For the past 14 years, Goertz has served as chief executive officer of the three foundations that oversee all operations of the Waco Family Health Center, which operates one of the oldest family medicine residency programs west of the Mississippi River. It provides care to more than 50,000 patients in McLennan County, Texas. Goertz also holds an appointment at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas.

Mabry was resoundingly re-elected to her third term as Speaker of the Congress of Delegates. She is a longtime leader on the state and national level, previously serving as AAFP Vice Speaker from 2005-2008, as TAFP president, and as one of TAFP’s delegates to the AAFP Congress for three consecutive two-year terms. In addition, she is a past recipient of the TAFP Family Physician of the Year award and the TAFP Foundation Philanthropist of the Year award.

Mabry is immediate past chief of staff and president of the medical board at CHRISTUS Santa Rosa City Center Hospital, and a faculty member at the CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency Program, San Antonio. She also serves as a clinical professor with the University of Texas Health Science Center, Department of Family Medicine, San Antonio.

Deuser, a private practice physician and owner of MaxHealth Family Medicine, received TAFP’s Public Health Award in 2009 and was TAFP’s nominee for the 2010 AAFP award. She follows a proud tradition of extraordinary contributions to public health; she is the third TAFP member to win AAFP’s Public Health Award since its creation.

In addition to her years of service on TAFP’s Commission on Public Health, Deuser represents the specialty of family medicine on the Texas Immunization Stakeholder Working Group, a coalition of public and private stakeholders that meets quarterly to discuss the current state of immunizations in Texas, identify shortages and disparities among different populations, and propose strategies to increase immunization education, awareness and implementation across the state.

She has also held multiple Hard Hats for Little Heads bicycle safety events in and around her community, and is on the Board of Directors for Christian Community Action, an organization that provides services to the poor in Southern Denton County to help stabilize and transforms their lives.

TAFP was represented at the Congress by delegates Lloyd Van Winkle, M.D., of Castroville and Justin Bartos, M.D., of North Richland Hills, and alternate delegates Erica W. Swegler, M.D., of Keller and Linda Siy, M.D., of Fort Worth. The Academy would like to extend its gratitude to Van Winkle, who completed his third two-year term as delegate and will rotate out of this leadership position. View reports from the five reference committees to see action the Congress took on proposed resolutions.

Finally, for the first time, AAFP gave members unable to attend the conference the capability to view many presentations by live stream. If you didn’t have the opportunity to watch live or want to revisit your favorite moments, go to the video archive on AAFP’s website. Here, members can watch Goertz’s inaugural address; view addresses from First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, M.D.; meet the 2010 AAFP Physician of the Year; and watch AAFP’s newest promotional video, “We Are Family Physicians.” The three-minute “We Are Family Physicians” video focuses on the special relationship family physicians have with patients and illustrates this relationship with firsthand stories.