Leading Physician Well-being Certificate Program

Creating Leaders of Change and Champions of Well-being

Physician leadership has never been a more important skill for the family physician than it is today. Thoughtful and capable family physician leaders can provide stability in uncertain times for their office teams, among their health system colleagues, and within their community. This physician leadership enhances the quality of care that teams can provide to their patients, improves the morale of the care team, and helps communities stay focused on health-enhancing activities.

Leading Physician Well-being (LPW), developed by the AAFP, is a unique certificate program designed to help you develop the leadership skills you need to spearhead that change among the physicians and other clinicians in your practice or health care organization.

All AAFP active members are eligible for LPW. Residents are eligible if they have the support of their residency program and should submit a letter of support from their program director. Starting in 2024, nonmembers are eligible for the program.

The application period for the 2025-26 program will open in the Fall of 2025. E-mail lpw@aafp.org to get notified when the application period opens.

Learn to Lead Change and Champion Well-being

LPW is a 10-month series that grows family physicians’ knowledge and skills in three foundational areas:

1. Physician well-being: Build expertise through education about the current state and importance of well-being, how to measure it, and best practices to achieve it, and develop a plan to raise awareness of its importance in your practice and organization.
2. Leadership development: Learn how to lead through wielding influence, implement change management and performance improvement (PI) activities and communicate with medical colleagues and others, and develop a change management plan to guide your organization’s work to improve physician well-being.
3. Performance improvement: Gain hands-on experience by developing and implementing a PI-CME project in your practice or organization that’s expected to wrap up one year after the program’s educational experience concludes. This activity meets American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) Performance Improvement Activities requirements.

This learning experience opportunity comprises a mix of livestreamed and in-person events along with regular online learning activities―all of which combine to foster development of a supportive learning community.

The Benefits of Participating in LPW

At completion, you’ll earn:

• A Leading Physician Well-being certificate.
• Recognition as being an AAFP thought leader and having the skills to serve as a spokesperson for physician well-being.
• CME credit, including PI-CME credits
• ABFM PI credit.

Over the 10-month course, you will gain:

• Peer-to-peer networking, guidance, and support from your colleagues.
• The satisfaction of knowing you’re honing your leadership skills while becoming an effective agent for change and a physician well-being expert.
• Career development as a physician well-being leader and champion.
• A unique opportunity to complete a PI-CME project that directly impacts your practice organization and covers ABFM PI requirements.