A note from the YPS chair
August 2025
From YPS Chair Alisha Reiss, MD, FACS
AMA Section Leadership Retreat
Your governing council had the opportunity to attend the Section Leadership Retreat Aug. 1-3 in Rosemont, Illinois. This well-attended event gave us the opportunity to connect and network with members of other section governing councils. The collaborative sessions focused on leadership and governance.
Storytelling with the CART model
For the morning session, the focus was on how to tell an impactful story in two to three minutes. After a panel session and discussion of the CART model (context, adversity, resolution and takeaway), we broke into small groups and were asked to create a story to support an AMA policy.
On the surface, this seemed like an easy task, but getting all of the critical elements into the story and keeping to the time constraints was more challenging than anticipated. This would be a great session to have at the National Advocacy Conference, just before we all head to the Hill. It reinforces the need to craft the story and practice the delivery.
Governance and collaboration
The afternoon focused on governance and collaboration. There were breakout rooms focusing on topics from education sessions, transitioning between sections, policy collaboration and working with other entities within the AMA. This provided opportunity to discuss areas to work with the other sections throughout the year. We were also able to learn what has worked well for other sections and areas where we can focus our future endeavors.
YPS Governing Council meeting
The final half day of our meeting was our YPS Governing Council meeting. We discussed some logistics for Interim and reviewed our standing committees’ work. We will be soliciting applications for new standing committee members soon, so watch for an email or GroupMe link to apply.
We met with our Board of Trustees liaisons and mostly discussed communication strategies. We thanked them for being more visible since Annual. We also had some time to brainstorm ways to further amplify our talking points.
Strategic planning
Lastly, the largest part of our meeting was working on strategic planning for the upcoming year. Our areas of focus will continue to be advocacy and policy, leadership development, engagement and visibility.
I hope you all had a great summer and are looking forward to fall. The Interim Meeting will be here before we know it, so be thinking about resolutions. Check the YPS policymaking page for deadlines and submission details.
Contact us
If you have any topics or issues that you would like us to address, please email me or post in the GroupMe. We look forward to serving you all!
As always, email us at [email protected] with any comments and questions.
