TAFP members shine during TMA’s TexMed conference

Three TAFP members received awards during the event. Hector Trevino, MD, was awarded the International Medical Graduate Outstanding Physician Award for his volunteer service on the Maverick County public emergency team during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trevino is a practices family medicine in Eagle Pass.

Kelly Bennett, MD, was awarded the Young at Heart Award for her guidance and support of TMA’s Young Physician Section, and young physicians in general. “I was very grateful to receive this award,” Bennett says. “Teaching medical students and residents has always been my passion and when they ‘grow up’ and leave the nest I always want them to know that I will still be there for them to discuss medicine, life, or any issues that can come up. They keep me ‘young at heart!’” Bennett practices in Lubbock, where she is also a professor in the family medicine department at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine.

Sam Mathis, MD, MBA, was given the C. Frank Webber, MD, Award for his service to medical students, and TMA’s Medical Student Section particularly. "Knowing the history of Dr. C. Frank Weber and his commitment to education and advancing students, it is humbling to be affiliated with his work," Mathis says. "Our students are the future of medicine, so any investment in them is going to bring about significant benefit to our patients and the community of medicine." Mathis practices in Galveston, where he is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UTMB Health, as well as the associate director of the Medical Student Education Program there.

Mathis also completed his term on the TMA Board of Trustees as the young physician representative. Mathis and Linda Siy, MD, were both elected to serve as TMA alternate delegates to the American Medical Association.

Lastly, Amarillo family physician Rodney Young, MD, was elected to TMA’s Board of Trustees. Young joins fellow family physician Greg Fuller, MD, who was elected to the board last year. Young is a professor and regional chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine Amarillo.

“It’s no secret to family physicians that we are on the front lines and in the trenches of health care and that we work in a health care system that is dysfunctional in so many ways,” says Young. “It’s important that we work alongside our physician colleagues from other specialties to help advocate for improvements in that system for our practices, our patients, their families, and for our communities. TMA offers a strong voice where physicians across disciplines come together to make those things happen and it’s critical that family physicians have a seat at that table. With both myself and Dr. Greg Fuller now serving on the board of trustees, and with our many family physician colleagues who serve in the house of delegates, our specialty will continue to have a clear voice in crafting and implementing those policies to effect positive changes for all of us.”

Congratulations to these TAFP members and thank you for representing family medicine so well.