Why Family and Community Medicine – #WONCAAPR2024

Thankful for the opportunities to grow and learn from experts and practitioners around the world. #residency#familymedicine#communitymedicine

I’ve seen many questions recently on “what is FCM?” or “what does FCM even bring to the table?”. In a world of multiple specialties and subspecialties, it’s easy to get caught up in the race of accolades and initialisms. It’s easy to forget that body parts are meaningful only in the context of the entire human body, and that, pushing it even further, our patients can only be truly healthy in the context of a healthy family and a healthy society. Communicating with and counseling our families, which was the learning point of my case presentation, is only a part of that. The art and science of family medicine exist in the relationships we build with our patients and their families, our teams, and our communities.

In a few months I’ll be released as a graduate into a wild wide world that still sometimes defines Universal Health Care as provision of primary care (versus secondary or tertiary care), instead of a paradigm shift towards Primary Health Care —a whole-of-systems approach for health, which is accessible, comprehensive, and person-centered.

What #WONCAAPR2024 showed us is that it is possible, in more assertive societies with high investment for health, to create enabling environments which allow for healthier choices —driving down the cost of healthy food, utilizing tech to incentivize exercise, providing more digestible health information for consumers, and bringing health consults to the community. The challenge is to deliver that kind of systems integration in the Philippines, and to drive the growth that happens when people interact and move together. The future has to be bright.

Applications for pre-residency in PGH Department of Family and Community Medicine are still open! PM for more details

*WONCA or World Organization of Family Doctors is a global not-for-profit professional organization representing family physicians and general practitioners from all regions of the world. I had the privilege of attending the WONCA Asia Pacific Region Conference, held in conjunction with the Singapore Primary Care Conference, last Aug 21 to 24, 2024. I presented a poster along with several other representatives from PGH DFCM and the Philippines. A central theme of the conference was “the art and science of family medicine”.