This week's edition of the e-Communication includes information the Annual Educational Conference; ACGME Awards; Review and Comment; and Milestones News.

2021 David C. Leach Awardee Lt. Guen Hunt, MD, is a chief resident in the Medical Corps in the US Navy at the National Capital Consortium at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, specializing in internal medicine.

2021 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Ann Schwartz, MD is the director of residency education in psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine.

2021 David C. Leach Awardee Thomas R. Greenwood, DO is the project lead for the family medicine department at Central Washington Family Medicine.

2021 GME Institutional Coordinator Excellence Awardee Lowell Virginia (Jennie) Craft, MPPM, C-TAGME is the director, GME Office at the University of Alabama Hospital – Birmingham.

With overdose as the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, it is imperative that the nation—including the entire medical community—take responsibility for its role in creating this epidemic and identify and enact strategies that can address it. This is Dr. Leana Wen’s position. The former Baltimore Health Commissioner and current president of Planned Parenthood spoke about the steps she and the City of Baltimore took to address opioid addiction in the community, and what role she sees physicians playing in solving this problem that is devastating the nation.

Jamie Dow, EdM, is assistant director for resident education and training at the University of Florida. Her poster, Mindfulness in Neurosurgery: Improving Neurosurgeon Wellness in Training and Beyond (with co-authors W. Christopher Fox, MD, Associate Program Director, University of Florida, and Gregory Murad, MD, Program Director, University of Florida), looked at wellness in neurosurgery, which Dow says “has traditionally been considered an oxymoron.” However, as priorities among neurological surgery residents evolve and the effects of physician burnout are increasingly recognized across specialties, life balance and overall well-being have become areas of emphasis and an opportunity for program improvement.

John V. Pamula, MD, FACP, led a quality improvement project focused on reducing burnout and increasing well-being among its residents. His poster, Multipronged Strategies to Improve Wellbeing and Work-Life Balance of Residents, was presented at the 2019 Annual Educational Conference, Engaging Each Other: Rediscovering Meaning in Medicine.

This is one in a series of project profiles of the ACGME’s Back to Bedside initiative, which empowers residents and fellows to develop innovations that foster meaning and joy in work and engage their patients on a deeper level.