STFM PODCAST - Academic Medicine Leadership Lessons
What separates a good leader from a great one? These in-depth interviews with some of family medicine's most influential leaders provide insight into pivotal experiences that boosted leadership skills and provided unprecedented opportunities for personal growth. This series of podcasts explores the development of leadership skills, including clarity, courage, decisiveness, humility, and passion, as a means to facilitating growth during times when healthcare professionals are addressing:• Motivation and Mentorship• Burnout and Transitions• Milestones and Meaning• Barriers and BureaucracyThis series of podcasts is sponsored by the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), the academic home for family medicine educators.
STFM PODCAST - Academic Medicine Leadership Lessons
The Life-Giving Act of Advocacy with Joseph Gravel, MD
STFM President Joseph Gravel, MD, illustrates how he has staved off burnout by building a career around the life-giving practices of advocacy, service, and gratitude. Dr Gravel gives us a sneak peek into the strategic plan which will guide STFM in the coming years, centered around topics such as artificial intelligence (AI). He also lets us know about his dislike of the “P-Word” (“provider”) and why the labels used for family medicine professionals are so important to maintaining that professionalism which gives agency and appropriate voice to those giving relationship-based care in an era of corporatized medicine.
Hosted by Omari A. Hodge, MD, FAAFP and Jay-Sheree Allen Akambase, MD
Copyright © Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, 2025
Resources:
- STFM Advocacy Course
- Professionalism in an Era of Corporate Medicine: Addressing Microlapses and Promoting Microacts as a New Model - Fam Med
- Empowerment and the P-Word - Fam Med
- Get to Know Incoming STFM President Joseph Gravel, MD - STFM Blog
Guest Bio:
Joseph W. Gravel Jr., MD, FAAFP
Dr Gravel is Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. During his 5+ years as Chair at MCW his department has created 3 new family medicine residency programs in Milwaukee (2) and Green Bay. He is a graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and the Virginia Commonwealth University Fairfax Family Practice Center Family Medicine Residency. Dr Gravel served as a residency program director for over 20 years; he was founding residency program director of the Tufts University Family Medicine Residency in Malden, MA and was Chief Medical Officer and residency program director at the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center, a Teaching Health Center FQHC in Lawrence, MA. He previously held teaching appointments at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Worcester) and Tufts University School of Medicine (Boston).
Dr Gravel is currently President of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (2024-25). He also serves on the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians’ Board of Directors and as the senior Wisconsin Delegate to the AAFP Congress of Delegates. He is a Technical Advisor for the HRSA THCGME program. He is a Past President of the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors (AFMRD), the Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC), and the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians. He has also served on the ABFM Board of Directors, the ACGME Review Committee for Family Medicine, the ADFM Finance Committee, the STFM Foundation Board of Trustees, and as Chair of the Academic Family Medicine Advocacy Committee. His department created Wisconsin’s first HRSA-funded Teaching Health Center in 2023. His residency programs participated in 3 national residency innovation initiatives- the P4 National Demonstration Project, the HRSA Teaching Health Center program (one of the original 11), and the ACGME Length of Training (LoT) Pilot. He was selected by Governor Deval Patrick to serve as a Commissioner on the Massachusetts Special Commission on Graduate Medical Education, has been deeply involved in national and statewide primary care workforce issues, and received the 2013 STFM Advocate Award.
www.stfm.org/stfmpodcast022025