TAFP members, staff appointed
to national positions

Five TAFP members and a TAFP staff member have been appointed to leadership roles within AAFP commissions and an AAFP delegation.

Joane Baumer, M.D., of Fort Worth has been appointed to the Commission on Education. Baumer currently serves as chair of the department of family medicine at John Peter Smith Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program. Baumer chaired the TAFP Commission on Academic Affairs from 2003 to 2006 and helped create an annual program to educate residency coordinators and clerkship coordinators.

Clare Hawkins, M.D., of Baytown has been appointed to the Commission on Continuing Professional Development. Hawkins, TAFP’s current parliamentarian, is the program director at San Jacinto Methodist Hospital Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program. Previously, he served on the faculty and as residency director at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, Canada, before moving to Baytown.

Melissa Gerdes, M.D., of Whitehouse will serve on the Commission on Quality and Practice. Gerdes is TAFP’s current president-elect. She is a private-practice physician at Trinity Clinic, which was one of 36 practices to take part in AAFP’s TransforMed National Demonstration Project. She has served as chair of the TAFP Task Force on the Medical Home.

Dale Moquist, M.D., of Sugar Land has been appointed to another three-year term as AAFP Delegate to the American Medical Association. From 1994 to 1997, he served as AAFP Alternate Delegate to AMA. In this role, Moquist chairs the group that travels to meetings of the AMA House of Delegates to speak on behalf of family physicians and promote the specialty within the larger house of medicine. He serves as president of the TAFP Foundation, the Academy’s philanthropic arm, and is on faculty at the Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program in Sugar Land.

Erica Swegler, M.D., of Keller has been appointed to the Commission on Governmental Advocacy. Swegler is a private-practice physician at North Hills Family Medicine. A TAFP past president and former TAFP Family Physician of the Year, she has been involved in governmental advocacy for many years on the state and national levels, including as a member of the TAFP Commission on Legislative and Governmental Affairs and the TAFP Political Action Committee Board of Directors, as a multi-year attendee of the AAFP Congressional Conference and AAFP State Legislative Conference, and as a member of AAFP’s FamMedPAC. Swegler was also appointed by the governor to serve as the primary care representative to the Texas Council on Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke. 

Joining Swegler, TAFP CEO Tom Banning will fill the chapter executive position on the Commission on Governmental Advocacy. Before Banning became the Academy’s CEO in 2007, he served nearly nine years as TAFP’s director of legislative affairs. He has led the effort to strengthen family medicine’s voice in the Texas Legislature and among other medical associations in the state. He was integral to the formation of the Primary Care Coalition, which includes TAFP, the Texas Pediatrics Society and the Texas Academy of Internal Medicine.