Hobbs elected President-Elect of Association of Departments of Family Medicine

Dr. Joseph Hobbs, Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University, is the new President-Elect of the Association of Departments of Family Medicine.

Hobbs was elected at the recent annual meeting of the association, which represents the chairmen and other senior administrators of about 150 Departments of Family Medicine at medical schools across the country and works to transform health care, education, and research to improve health.

Hobbs, who also is MCG’s Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Primary Care and Georgia Academy of Family Physicians Joseph W. Tollison, M.D., Distinguished University Chair, will serve a one-year term as President-Elect, followed by a one-year term as President, and a one-year term as Immediate Past President and Chairman of the association’s 16-member Board of Directors.

Hobbs, a 1974 MCG graduate, was elected to a two-year term as Secretary of the association in 2013 and is in his second term on the association’s Board of Directors. He has been an association member since 1998 and has served as the association’s representative to the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine’s Family Medicine Curriculum Advisory Committee.

Since 2012, Hobbs has served on the Pisacano Leadership Foundation Board, the philanthropic foundation of the American Board of Family Medicine. He served as a member of the American Board of Family Medicine Board of Directors from 2003-08 and of its Executive Committee from 2006-08. He has also served as Treasurer and Chair of the Examination and Audit/Finance Committees.

Hobbs also is President of the Board of Directors of the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians Educational Foundation, the academy’s Task Force on Health Policy, and a Board Trustee for its philanthropic foundation. He also is a member of the Board of Editors for the Health Monitor Network, which provides health maintenance and disease management and prevention information for patients.

He is Project Director on a Health Resources and Services Administration/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant to train family medicine physicians in Georgia. Hobbs also helped establish a statewide family medicine preceptorship program that enables MCG medical students to learn beside family physicians throughout Georgia and led the development of Tri-County Health System Inc., a 30-year-old initiative to provide care to the medically underserved Georgia counties of Warren, Glascock, Taliaferro, and Hancock counties. Hobbs also helped establish a Family Medicine Referral and Consult Service to work with physicians practicing in more rural areas of the state and helped MCG students start a weekly clinic for Augusta’s homeless 25 years ago. Hobbs is a member of the MCG Strategic Plan Steering Committee, was President of the MCG Alumni Association from 2010-11, and received MCG’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Institutional Service in 2011.