It was an honor to attend the annual FMX conference this year at the Washington Convention Center. Overall my conference experience was extremely positive. It was so inspiring to be surrounded by thousands of family medicine colleagues from all over the country who are passionate and practices in so many diverse settings.

On the first day of the conference I was able to attend the Primary Care Forum on Integrated Behavioral Health hosted by the Robert Graham Center. The presentation highlighted the current challenges we face with a behavioral health workforce shortage, the mapping of behavioral health providers co-located with primary care physician practices, and also the legislative landscape.

The following days of the conference I was able to attend a number of CME sessions. I particularly enjoyed the “Behavioral Health Integration in the Time of COVID-19” hosted by the AMA Advocacy Section and faculty from University of Colorado. The session was 3 hours and introduced a wealth of resources in behavioral health including guides to opioid use disorder treatment and team-based care.

I was also able to attend the plenary session with Malcolm Gladwell. His ability to weave stories from different disciplines and connect it to a larger picture is inspiring. I found his overall message of improved communication, not necessarily improved performance to be the key to improving trust.

I’m also a fairly active participant on twitter (@MTaskierMed) and the conference was a great opportunity to connect with many colleagues in the #MedTwitter space and get introduced to various thought leaders in the family medicine space.