Resident Leader Hopes to Help Students Find FUTURE in Family Medicine
March 27, 2025, David Mitchell — Jiayu “Kate” Tian, M.D., once thought she was done with the AAFP’s annual conference for medical students and residents. Turns out, the event isn’t quite finished with her.
As a fourth-year student at Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, and later as an intern at the University of Vermont Medical Center, Tian served as a regional coordinator in the AAFP’s Family Medicine Interest Group Network. In that role, she helped plan several sessions for the 2022 National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students (now FUTURE).
Tian had time for a national leadership role as a fourth-year student, but she wasn’t planning to take on another leadership position related to the event. That changed last summer when she returned to Kansas City, Missouri, between her second and third years of residency.
“It’s hard to not be inspired in the student and resident congresses because you see peers who are so passionate about the issues,” she said. “You think, ‘Oh my goodness. I want to be like them, writing resolutions and running for positions.’ AAFP Board members and other family medicine leaders were all encouraging me and asking, ‘What are you running for?’ A lot of people were invested in my leadership journey even when I didn’t have the confidence to think I could do it.”
Tian was elected resident chair of FUTURE 2025. She has helped plan the July 31-Aug. 2 meeting in Kansas City and will lead the proceedings with her student counterpart, Austen Ott of the University of Minnesota.
The chair role resonated with Tian because the event has influenced her education and training in family medicine since the summer after her first year in med school.
“My medical school provides excellent education,” she said, “but there wasn’t a big celebration of primary care. I always felt a little alone when I had the goal of going into family medicine. I attended my first National Conference alone, but I had an exceptional time because I felt included. I went to the sessions highlighting the different scopes and the amazing things family docs do. It was important for me to be exposed to those physicians who are caring for all kinds of patients and meeting different needs. It showed me that I could do family medicine and provide critical aspects of things like obstetrics and reproductive health. I could advocate for patients with extremely limited means from vulnerable populations. I also found mentors who encouraged me in my journey.”
That journey started in a tide pool far, far from home.
Tian grew up in Guangzhou in southeastern China, northwest of Hong Kong. At 16, she came to the United States for a week-long marine biology summer camp. She had known she wanted to be a doctor even as the little kid who carried bandages with her, eager to help someone in need. The problem was that she didn’t enjoy biology as it was taught at her school in China.
“A lot of it was memorization-based,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t have the level of interest I needed because I knew I needed to be good at biology if I was going to be a doctor.”
She found a different approach at camp, where participants woke at 5 a.m. to collect and observe marine creatures from California’s Bodega Bay. Tian found hermit crabs and studied whether the size of a crustacean’s claws influenced their level of aggression.
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Medical students matching in 2026 — and beyond: Did you know that at the AAFP’s FUTURE 2025 you can:
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- learn more about the specialty that’s committed to comprehensive, continuous care of patients of all ages?
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Aug. 2 event in Kansas City, Missouri.
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“We were encouraged to come up with our own research question based on our experience in the tide pool,” she said. “They were simple experiments, but the teachers were encouraging of our research questions and helped us formulate a scientific way to do our hypothesis, experiment and presentation. That was the moment I realized that I do enjoy science. It was just a different way of learning it.”
Tian decided to pursue education in the United States, graduating with honors from the University of Rochester.
“I felt extremely lucky to be able to get into med school and find a career path that is perfectly aligned with who I am as a person and what I want to do in my life,” she said.
It helped that Tian found a shadowing opportunity with her best friend’s mother, Laura Booth, M.D., FAAFP.
“She was my first introduction to family medicine,” Tian said. “I was immediately drawn to the relationships and the trust her patients had in her and the fact that she knows them so well. She knows the family — the parents, the grandparents, the little ones. I was extremely close to my grandparents growing up, and I thought, ‘Wow, I wish my grandparents had a family doctor like this who could look after their health and have that relationship, so they don't feel so alone in managing their own diseases.’ Family physicians hold our patients’ hands through these journeys, regardless of the patient or the conditions they have because we see everyone. And everyone deserves a family physician.”
Tian’s exposure to Booth and her family wasn’t limited to a clinic or hospital.
“They were essentially my adopted parents in America,” she said. “I know them well, so I was able to see what it's like to be a family physician, not just professionally but also what their life is like. That was a great exposure for me.”
Tian will complete her training in June and already has accepted a position at a federally qualified health center in Vermont.
“There’s a large immigrant population,” she said. “As someone who came from a different country, not knowing anything about the U.S. health care system, I remember how terrifying it was to navigate this complicated system.”
She also hopes to help future family physicians find their paths as the chair of FUTURE.
“We need to grow the number of family physicians in this country,” she said. “I’m excited to see how I can contribute to this experience for students and residents.”