‘Get Coffee’: FP Leader’s Wisdom Nurtures Unity From Conflict

In 2019, Dennis Salisbury, M.D., was running for the AAFP Board of Directors before terminal cancer ended his campaign. In place of the campaign speech that he would have given, a dear friend read a statement he wrote to the Congress of Delegates, which was debating particularly controversial resolutions that year.

Dr. Salisbury asked the family physicians who were on opposite sides of those contentious issues to “get coffee” together and simply talk.

In recent years, some members of the AAFP took his words to heart. During Academy events like COD, the Family Medicine Advocacy Summit and the National Conference of Constituency Leaders, we did indeed get coffee with our peers who hold opposite viewpoints. We learned that while we may be on different sides of difficult social issues, none of us are monsters with horns. We have much more that unites us as family physicians than divides us.

The difference those conversations made was evident at this year’s COD in Phoenix, where delegates considered a potentially contentious resolution related to pregnancy services.

COD has evolved since the pandemic, and this year’s Congress provided multiple opportunities for members to provide testimony on resolutions, whether that was through written testimony before Congress convened or after reviewing the initial reference committee recommendations during the in-person reference committee hearings on extracted items.

Rather than being painstakingly duked out during the COD business session, compromise wording was added to the reference committee’s substitute resolution (which members can read in Item 5 of this consent calendar) and it sailed through the final business session without further debate.

The fruits of Dr. Salisbury’s words came full circle. We had successfully settled our differences and came to compromise language, which made for a much more collegial and positive Congress session. It is also fair to say that the early, online testimony procedure worked, as did the collegial, in-person discussions at the COD.

Policy is not changed only with resolutions on the floor at COD; it is also impacted by open and honest dialogue among colleagues who have the courage to sit down with those who hold opposing viewpoints. These conversations are where our Academy’s diversity can be harnessed to solve some of the biggest challenges facing our specialty. May the echoes of Dennis Salisbury continue to guide us for years to come.