Award Overview

The $16,500 Family Medicine Cares Resident Service Award creates an opportunity for first-year and second-year Family Medicine Residents to fulfill a desire to address health disparities by tackling the health needs of the underserved in their local communities. Up to two awards will be presented annually.

All first-year and second-year Family Medicine residents who are members of the AAFP are eligible to apply. The 12-month service project, January 1 – December 31, has the following requirements:

• Resident must work with an organization that provides health care (e.g., free clinic, health department) to enhance services.
• Project must address a health disparity in the community.
• Project should have an enduring benefit to the patients and the community that will continue after the 12-month project period.
• Resident must present at the AAFP National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students. This presentation will occur at the mid-point of the project and serves as an interim report.
• In designing the project, emphasis should be placed on activities that will have an enduring benefit to the patients and the community after the 12-month project period.

It may be helpful to obtain input from the clinic's staff when designing the project. The application period opens July 15 and closes September 30.

We encourage all to apply and are committed to developing community projects addressing health disparities by Family Medicine residents who reflect the rich diversity of the specialty and the patients served.

Requirements

• Read Family Medicine Cares Resident Service Award Guidelines.
• Budget Worksheet: 
  • Download and complete budget worksheet. Upload with application online.
• Required Letters of Recommendation / Support:    
  • Residency Director’s letter of recommendation.
  • Letter of recommendation from the Medical or Clinic Director where the project will be implemented.
  • Mentor’s letter of recommendation including agreement to assist with the project.
  • Letters must be typed, on letterhead, with a valid signature and uploaded with the online application.
• Resident Reporting Deadlines & Presentation Requirements:
  • Interim Presentation at FUTURE (formerly National Conference): late July/early August.
  • Final Report (including brief video project summary): February 1.
  • End of Project Survey: March 1.
• Clinic Reporting Requirements: 
  • End of Project Survey: January 1.
    

The application is open July 15 and closes September 30 at 11:59 pm. Apply through the online portal by clicking on the Apply Today button below. 

Questions: Please contact Veronica Roberts or call 800-274-2237, ext. 6239.

Funding Components

Up to two Family Medicine Cares Resident Service Awards will be provided annually. The award totals $16,500 and contains the following elements:

• $10,000 award will be provided to the resident whose service project is selected for funding. This funding is to be used by the resident only for costs directly related to the project. These may include: medical supplies (e.g., diabetes testing), equipment rental or purchase, software purchase or lease, patient education materials, communication expenses (e.g., postage, printing, office supplies), patient incentives/reimbursement, mileage/transportation (e.g., resident mileage), patient reimbursement, and personnel not employed by free clinic or health care facility (e.g., patient educators, substance abuse or peer counselors).
• $5,000 award will be provided to the free clinic (or similar health care facility) where the service project is implemented.
• $500 stipend will be given to the residency program to celebrate and recognize the resident who wins the Family Medicine Cares Resident Service Award.
• $1,000 travel award reimbursement will be provided to the resident to attend the National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students for the purpose of presenting the results of the project. Note: Registration fees for National Conference will be waived for speakers.

What the $10,000 Award to the Resident Will Not Fund

• Indirect or overhead costs.
• Travel to present findings at a professional meeting, conference or seminar. (Note: The $1,000 travel award reimbursement is provided in addition to the $10,000 award to the resident and must be used to attend AAFP's National Conference and present the project's results and findings.)

Resident Service Award Recipients

2025

• Dr. Katie Allan and Dr. Bridget Bunda are PGY-2s at Full Circle Health- Boise, Family Medicine Residency of Idaho. Dr. Allan’s and Dr. Bunda’s project, “Wound Care and Health Screenings for Unhoused People in Boise” will partner with Interfaith Sanctuary to address healthcare gaps for Boise’s population of unhoused individuals by 1) Increasing capacity for shelter-based wound care clinics through the purchase of additional supplies, 2) Broadening programming offering to include STI testing, and 3) Expanding services beyond the walls of the shelter to people staying outside.

• Dr. Amra Haroon is a PGY-2 with the Mississippi Delta Family Medicine Residency program in Greenville, MS. Dr. Haroon’s project, “SPARK: An Interactive Educational Intervention to Enhance Adolescent Health Literacy” seeks to improve health literacy among adolescents, improve access to adolescent-friendly healthcare, and improve healthcare outcomes among adolescents and adults alike in the Mississippi Delta. SPARK (Supporting Positive health-related behaviors in Adolescents through Resourcefulness and Knowledge) will 1) Address basic health topics including nutrition, physical fitness, mental and behavioral health, social wellbeing and chronic disease prevention, 2) Enhance communication between adolescents and health care providers, 3) Encourage informed decision-making and responsible health behaviors, and 4) Encourage uptake of existing community resources including local healthcare facilities for routine healthcare maintenance.

2024

• Dr. Brandy Truong is a PGY-2 and Dr. Sofya Kats is a PGY-1 at Kaweah Health Family Medicine, in Visalia, California. Dr. Truong’s and Dr. Kats’ project, “Addressing STI and Cancer Screenings in LGBT+ Population in Tulare County” will partner with a local LGBT+ Center, The Source to provide formalized training and workshops to the residency program on using inclusive language and gathering comprehensive sexual health history. This project will also train residents on three site testing (pharyngeal, urine/urethral/vaginal, urethral) for sexually transmitted illnesses and anal paps for anal cancer and how to perform screenings for implementation with a goal of yearly training and workshops for new residents provided by The Source.
• Dr. Armand Ntchana is a PGY-2 with the LSU Family Medicine Residency Program in Alexandria, Louisiana. Dr. Ntchana’s project, “Rapides Health Project” is a comprehensive wellness and health education initiative focused on achieving measurable and lasting positive changes in the health status of participants residing in Rapides Parish, Central Louisiana. The project targets modifiable behaviors among uninsured patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease (CAD), with an emphasis on achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight. RHP will include the following components: (a) Free nutritional and dietary education for uninsured patients, (b) A free 12-month individualized exercise program, (c) Access to healthcare through the LSU clinic with routine checks, and (d) A free 3-month supply of GLP-1 agonists like Semaglutide (Ozempic) to optimize body weight.

2023

• Dr. Jonathan Toot is a PGY-2 with Soin Family Medicine Residency, Kettering Health Network, Beavercreek, Ohio.  Dr. Toot’s project, “Being a Good Neighbor: Empowering a Healthier Community Through a Multidisciplinary Medication Nonadherence Intervention Strategy at the Good Neighbor House Community Clinic” will use a series of interventions on both individual and organizational levels to address medication non-adherence and improve outcomes for low-income residents in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Toot will leverage resources and community partnerships in order to educate, increase accessibility, and modify behaviors for both patients and healthcare providers through the SFM residency program and the community partner Good Neighbor House.

• Dr. Maniraj Jeyaraju is a PGY-2 with the University of North Carolina Family Medicine Residency Program, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Dr. Jeyaraju’s project, “Promoting Language Equity in Primary Care Clinics” will seek to deliver language equity through bottom-up, organization-level solutions. Dr. Jeyaraju will leverage resources from the Office of Minority Health at DHHS to conduct a needs assessment of peri-visit communication needs of Arabic-speaking patients who visit the UNC Family Medicine Center in order to design and propose Arabic language-expansion interventions and study the impact of those interventions with the hope of expanding this solution to other Non-English Language Preference patients.

2022

• Dr. Aerial Petty is a PGY-1 with New York Presbyterian- Columbia University Family Medicine Program, New York, New York.  Dr. Petty’s project, “Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Minority Youth in New York City” will take place at Brotherhood Sisterhood Sol, a community-based organization located in Harlem, New York. The project is composed of three overarching units (mental health, nutritional health, and physical health) organized into weekly lessons aimed at teaching youth, ages 8-22, that many factors can contribute to their mental health. Dr. Petty hopes to increase awareness of mental health, improve the ability to address mental health concerns, and foster the utilization of coping skills by youth.

• Dr. Michelle-Ann Ramsay and Dr. Tiffany Gillion are both PGY-1s with Tallahassee Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program, Tallahassee, Florida. Their project, “Feeding Our Community: An Initiative to Reduce Food Insecurity and Address the Social Determinants of Health in Underserved Communities” will take a two-pronged approach to help communities with some of the highest rates of food insecurity in Florida. Focus will be placed on the education of health care workers on how to screen for food insecurity as well as existing community resources to develop an effective referral system to connect patients to these resources. A secondary goal of the project is to establish a TMH FMRP Food Bank.
  

2021

• Dr. Arshely Fleuristal (PGY1) and Dr. Stefanny Santana Rivera (PGY1) with Community Health of South Florida in Miami, FL.  The goal of their project, “Community Health Weight Loss Initiative,” is to foster an environment that improves patient-provider engagement and communication around healthy lifestyles, minimizing barriers by offering practical and modifiable opportunities for healthy living.


• Dr. Rachelle Dulan (PGY2) with Grandview Family Medicine Residency in Dayton, OH. Dr. Dulan’s project, “Food is My Medicine (Eating right to Fix What’s Wrong),” will be conducted at the Gem City Market in her hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The goal of the project is to introduce the community to the concepts of healthy eating to foster an environment of improving health.

2020:

• Dr. Rebecca Rada (PGY2) and Dr. Mindy Guo (PGY2) with Saint Louis University Family Medicine Residency in St. Louis, MO.  The goal of their project, “Patient Centered Addiction Treatment: Leveraging Accessibility and Inclusion to Improve Medication for Addiction Treatment (MAT), is to bridge the gap between the need of the community to the resources available at Family Care Health Clinic (FCHC). The partnering clinic is a FQHC and an accredited Patient Centered Medical Home and affiliated with the Saint Louis University Family Medicine Residency. Drs. Rada and Guo believe their clinic is the optimum setting to provide care and MAT services to those nearby by taking out the barriers of transportation and initial cost, which will ultimately allow for improved access to care, establishing on MAT, and hopefully decreasing the amount of opiate related deaths in their targeted community.
  
  
• Dr. Laura Latey Bradford with University of Maryland Family Medicine in Baltimore, MD will be partnering with the University Family Medicine (UFM) Clinic, a non-profit, NCQA Level 3 Patient Centered Medical Home that has been a pillar of primary care for the West Baltimore community for many decades and has been recognized as a national leader in urban health. The primary objectives of Dr. Bradford’s project,  “Queens Court: A postpartum education and support group designed to empower and facilitate wellness in women of color”  are to: 1) bring awareness to the healthcare and wellness needs of women in the postpartum period up to one year after delivery, 2) connect postpartum women with a support network of providers, resources and peers to address those needs, and 3) empower postpartum women to create a community built on shared experiences. 

2019:

• "Choices and Life-long Skills: Elevating Adolescent Contraception Awareness through the Implementation of a Resident-led School-Based Teen Clinic" by Lulua Bahrainwala, MD and Jose F. Velasquez, MD
  • Lulua Bahrainwala, MD (PGY-2) and Jose F. Velasquez, MD (PGY-1) with the Citrus Valley Health Partners Family Medicine Residency plans to collaborate with East Valley Community Health Center (EVCHC), a Federally-Qualified Health Center, to create a resident-led school-based teen clinic to offer vaccines, sports physicians, and contraceptive counseling/services to adolescents in a respectful, convenient and easily accessible manner. This resident-led school-based teen clinic will address the objectives for Family Planning of the Healthy People 2020, especially the indicators aimed at adolescent youth aged 13-19.  
• "Healthy Kids: Establishing Pediatric Obesity Group Visits at a Family Medicine Residency Clinic" by Marisa Yanez, MD
  • Marisa Yanez, MD with the Stanford-O’Connor Family Medicine Residency Program will collaborate with the Indian Health Center (IHC) of Santa Clara Valley to expand on an existing family-based group program (Healthy Kids) to educate and empower overweight and obese children and their families to make lifelong lifestyle changes to ensure a healthier tomorrow.

2018:

• "Finding Respite for Duluth's Homeless by Becky Davies, MD and Jesse Susa, MD
  • Collaborated with First Covenant Church and the Churches United in Ministry (CHUM) and Loaves & Fishes to implement a year-long medical respite in the hopes to ultimately improve quality of life for Duluth’s underserved. The project’s goal was to ultimately improve quality of life for Duluth’s underserved by demonstrating not only the financial benefit of medical respite care, but also stewardship in use of community sources.
• "The LARC Initiative" by Diahann Marshall, MD and Pamela Castro-Camero, MD
  • The primary goal with this project was to increase awareness and knowledge of LARCs among junior and senior high school girls and parents as well as to increase access to LARCs by identifying primary care physicians/facilities that offer these services. They utilized pre and post surveys that will provide insight on the effectiveness of their educational component.
  • The secondary goal was to provide LARCs for students who are interested, but have financial, insurance or transportation barriers. They tracked those students who come to the clinic for LARCs as a result of the “iDecide” educational sessions as another way to assess their efficacy.

2017:

• “Telemedicine, the Modern-Day House Call” by Brian McDaniel, MD and Amanda Dailey, MD
  • The primary goal of this resident service project is to decrease the missed and canceled visits of the clinic’s Type II diabetic patients from 46% to less than 20% within the project year. Drs. Dailey and McDaniel will use a combination of the traditional Home Visit with the modern technology of Telemedicine. Telemedicine facilitators (clinical health educators) will visit each patient's home with the appropriate technology and supplies to facilitate the patient’s Telehealth visit with their primary care physician who will video conference with them from the family medicine clinic. During the visit a normal diabetic follow-­up visit will be conducted with the clinical health educator performing clinical tasks that must be done in person (such as collecting vital signs, abbreviated physical exam).
  • The telemedicine initiative will be integrated into the existing diabetes program for uninsured Type II diabetic patents, many of whom are high-risk for morbidity and require intensive medical management. The existing program provides funding for clinic visits as well as access to free medications and diabetic testing supplies. However, this patient population has other barriers to care which often make it difficult for them to attend follow-up visits at the clinic. The hypothesis is that telemedicine “home visits” will increase accessibility and improve continuity of care.
• “Partners in Parenting” by Drs. Alexandra Printz, Marie Pereira and Marissa Moultrie
  • This service project applied a multi-disciplinary, community-driven approach that identifies young children at high risk for maltreatment and gives caretakers useful tools to help them be better parents.
  • The approach included a comprehensive needs assessment, curriculum implementation, resource management, training of providers, evaluation of the intervention, and the development of sustainable community partnerships.
  • The target population for Partners in Parenting was families with children, ages 0-5 years, currently receiving primary care at UFM. In this setting, “high risk for maltreatment” is defined as parental history of violence, drug abuse, mental health illness or previous events of child maltreatment, domestic violence and teen-aged pregnancy.
  • All prenatal patients were provided with a packet describing what to expect as they move through pregnancy, common questions that may emerge during and after delivery, and most importantly, straightforward instructions on how to care for a new baby at home. With the support of the Family Medicine residency, the Partners in Parenting project utilized validated tools to screen and identify children at additional risk for maltreatment. Using this data, they created the UFM Parenting Needs and Risk Assessment. Once identified, high-risk families were offered monthly Group Well Child Visits, targeted Healthy Steps intervention, and Partners in Parenting resources.

2016:

• "Beyond Disease-Oriented Care for the Underserved: Increasing Access to Prevention" by Caitlin Lee, DO
  • Dr. Lee, a second-year resident at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix Family Medicine Residency, implemented her preventive care service project at the St. Vincent de Paul Clinic (SVdP Clinic), the largest free clinic in the greater Phoenix area. The aim of this 12-month project was to increase cervical, breast and colorectal cancer screening rates for SVdP’s uninsured patients to rates that were equal to national cancer screening rates for insured patients.
• “Merced Needle Exchange” by Karsha Sathianathan, MD
  • Dr. Sathianathan aimed to implement a harm-reduction needle exchange program at the Merced Family Care Clinic, a licensed, rural health clinic located in an area of extreme poverty.
  • In Merced, California, the percentage of people using intravenous drugs, like heroin and methamphetamine, is nearly three times the national average. Extreme poverty, unemployment, poor transportation and lack of insurance increase the probability of injection drug users reusing and sharing unsterile needles.
  • The Merced Needle Exchange proposed to provide clean needles, teach proper injection techniques and wound care to intravenous drug-users.  Leaders of needle exchange projects in surrounding cities advised that support from city and county officials would be essential to overcome resistance to this type of initiative.

2015:

• "Lifestyle is Medicine" by Christina Miller, MD, and Stewart Wilkey, DO
  • The Lifestyle is Medicine service project includes the development of resident training tools, regular scheduling of residents in the Cornerstone Community Health Free Clinic for the purpose of Lifestyle Visits, and use of devices that monitor objective outcomes so patients can take charge of their health and track their own goals.

2014:

• "Pintando Un Futuro Mas Brillante/Painting a Brighter Future" by Isa Barth-Rogers, MD, MPH, and Yelba M. Castellon-Lopez, MD
  • UCLA family medicine residents Isa Barth-Rogers, MD, MPH, and Yelba Castellon-Lopez, MD, through their project titled, "Pintando un Futuro mas Brillante/Painting a Brighter Future," successfully developed and implemented an immersion health education program for Latina patients with co-morbid type 2 diabetes mellitus and depression.

2013:

• "Bridging the Gap: From the Streets to a Medical Home" by Jennifer King, MD