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TAFP governance


Officers

TAFP elects family physician members to represent the Academy in our officer positions: president, president-elect, treasurer, parliamentarian, and immediate past president. Each year TAFP sends out a call to the membership asking for nominations for the positions. Candidates are presented to the Nominating Committee at Interim Session and this committee presents a slate of candidates for election by the TAFP Member Assembly during Annual Session. 


Board of directors

The Board of directors is made up TAFP’s five officers and two delegates to AAFP, four at-large directors, one new physician, one advocate for diversity, one resident physician, and one medical student. The at-large directors serve staggered two-year terms while all other members are chosen annually. The Member Assembly elects each of these positions.


READ THE TAFP BYLAWS

VIEW A CHART OF TAFP'S GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

MEET THE TAFP OFFICERS

TAFP'S COUNCILS AND COMMITTEES

Member Assembly

The Member Assembly is comprised of delegates from local chapters of TAFP, convening each year during Annual Session. The number of delegates from each local chapter is determined by the total number of active members in the chapter. Given the wide variation in activity levels among chapters, the process for delegate selection differs from chapter to chapter.

Members present at the Assembly receive information from TAFP leaders and others who wish to address the membership, and participate in opportunities to address Academy leadership about matters important to the general membership. In addition, the board can refer items to the member assembly to garner input from the body. All members are welcome to attend and upon permission of the presiding officer, a TAFP member in good standing has the privilege of addressing the assembly. Voting, however, is restricted to the delegates.

Aside from electing board members and officers, the Member Assembly’s powers include reviewing policy and acting on business referred by the board of directors. They provide feedback, ask questions, and can voice their displeasure by electing new leaders, but the legal and fiscal decisions are made by the board of directors. Any issues or ideas generated at the Member Assembly can be referred to a committee or council or directly to the board for further discussion and action.


Committees and councils

TAFP’s success depends on active engagement from members. TAFP has standing committees — Bylaws, Finance, and Nominating, each with three-year terms. For active members TAFP also has three councils — Workforce and Member Engagement, Medical Practice, and Health of the Public, each with two-year terms. Students and residents can be appointed to one-year terms.

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(From left) Adrian Billings, MD, PhD, treasurer; Puja Sehgal, MD, parliamentarian; Ike Okwuwa, MD, president-elect; Lindsay Botsford, MD, MBA, CMQ, president; and Terrance Hines, MD, immediate past president, begin their terms as TAFP's new officers after their inauguration at the 2024 Annual Session and Primary Care Summit in The Woodlands, Texas.

Meet TAFP's officers

Lindsay Botsford, MD, MBA, CMQ | President

Dr. Botsford is a market medical director with One Medical, where she leads their Houston practices and cares for older adults on Medicare in a value-based model. Her passions include health care transformation, quality, leadership development, and increasing joy in practice for the health care team. She is a graduate of Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine, and completed residency training at Baylor College of Medicine’s Kelsey-Seybold Clinic. She earned an MBA at the University of Houston.


Ike Okwuwa, MD | President-Elect

Dr. Okwuwa serves as residency program director for the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center of the Permian Basin and is chairman of the board of directors for Permian Basin Health Network, a physician-hospital organization. He graduated from the University of Benin Medical School in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, and completed residency training at TTUHSCPB. He previously served as the new physician member and an at-large member on TAFP’s Board of Directors.


Adrian Billings, MD, PhD | Treasurer

Dr. Billings, of Alpine, is the Chief Medical Officer of Preventative Care Health Services FQHC in the Big Bend, and he is the Associate Academic Dean of Rural and Community Engagement and Senior Fellow of the F. Marie Hall Institute for Rural and Community Health at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. He has been a career-long rural community physician along the Texas-Mexico border in West Texas. 


Puja Sehgal, MD | Parliamentarian

Dr. Sehgal is a practicing family physician in Houston, and currently serves as the Chief of Family Medicine Department at Kelsey-Seybold and an elected board member of Kelsey Seybold medical group. She completed medical school in India, an internship at Wichita Falls Family Medicine Residency Program, and residency at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She is past president of the Harris County chapter and has served on various committees and councils during her 20-year membership with TAFP. She previously chaired the Section on Special Constituencies and served as vice chair of the Council on Medical Practice. She served on the TAFP board in 2020 and has mentored residents for TAFP’s Resident Leadership Experience program.


Terrance Hines, MD | Immediate Past President

Dr. Hines is the executive director and chief medical officer for University Health Services at the University of Texas at Austin. His practice emphasizes student health, gender care, and HIV prevention. He completed undergraduate and medical school at Texas A&M University and residency at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. He has been recognized with the Austin Under 40 Award in Medicine and Health Care as well as the TAFP Special Constituency Leadership Award.