Chair's message: Welcome back to autumn!

Welcome back to autumn! I hope each of you had a restful summer filled with nourishing activities and the people that matter most.

These coming months will be very important for family medicine as a discipline and for the University of Toronto Department of Family and Community Medicine. As the arbitration process works its way through the system, we will hear the outcome of the Ontario Medical Association and Ministry of Health physician services agreement, determining how—and how much—Ontario family doctors are paid (among other things). At the same time, we have begun another year of expansion across our residency training sites to accommodate more future family doctors. We are also finally seeing small but meaningful expansions of interprofessional primary care teams in Ontario for the first time in over a decade. Taken together, these changes mark an important moment for the future of our discipline and have the potential to significantly improve conditions for both family doctors and the communities we serve. Many DFCM faculty members have been hard at work contributing across all these initiatives.

This continues to be a time for us to lead with positivity and hope. We know the value of primary care and the joys that a career in family medicine can bring. Let’s make sure others do too. 

As always, thank you for your hard work and good spirits in your many roles—in clinical care, teaching, research and leadership—to our department and the future of family medicine. 

Dr. Danielle Martin
Chair, DFCM