Family Medicine and the Counterculture Revolution for our Times

Presented by Kevin Grumbach, MD, University of California, San Francisco
STFM Annual Conference 2024 Blanchard Lecture | Monday, May 6, 2024

Family medicine was forged in the crucible of social movements of the 1960s. The consequential issues of our times—climate change, systemic racism, inequality of wealth, gun violence, reproductive rights, among others—are all contests for the common good that require social movements to achieve systemic reform. Primary care, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, is also a common good. Is family medicine ready to tap its brash, founding energy to reignite a second counterculture revolution to challenge profits, power, and privilege that harm society’s collective wellbeing? This presentation will address the essential ingredients of a counterculture revolution, including daring to be radical and not settling for incrementalism; speaking truth to power; identifying and dismantling structures that reinforce the status quo; democratizing alliances; and acknowledging one’s own complicity in harmful systems. If the speaker and audience do not feel uncomfortable at some point during the session, then the presentation will not have achieved its objectives.

Learning Objectives: At the end of the session each participant should...

• To recognize the roots of family medicine as a countercultural specialty
• To be able to characterize primary care as a common good
• To identify the key elements of a counterculture revolution
• To incorporate revolutionary acts into one’s professional life while being able to continue to earn a livelihood in family medicine

Presentation Slides

Copyright © Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, 2024

Kevin Grumbach, MD:
Kevin Grumbach, MD is Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He served as Chair of the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine from 2003-2022, and as Vice President for Population Health for the UCSF Health system from 2015-2018. He is a Founding Director of the UCSF Center for Excellence in Primary Care and Director of the Community Engagement Program for the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute. His research and scholarship on the primary care workforce, innovations in primary care, racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions, and community health improvement and health equity have widely influenced policy and practice. With Tom Bodenheimer, he co-authored the best-selling textbook on health policy, Understanding Health Policy - A Clinical Approach, now in its 8 th edition, and the book, Improving Primary Care – Strategies and Tools for a Better Practice, published by McGraw Hill. He received a Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Health Resources and Services Administration Award for Health Workforce Research on Diversity, the Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence and Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education, and the UCSF Chancellor’s Public Service Award, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr Grumbach has been an advisor to Congressional Committees and government agencies on primary care and health reform and a member of the National Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and currently serves on the California Health Workforce Education and Training Council. He cares for patients at the family medicine practices at San Francisco General Hospital and UCSF Health.