Past Macy Conferences & Resources

Below are links to Macy Foundation conference recommendations reports, commissioned papers, conference monographs, and other related materials, including audio resources (where available), from 2007 to present day.

2022 Conference: Ensuring Fairness in Medical Education Assessment

In 2022, the Macy Foundation convened educators, learners, and others to develop a shared vision for an optimal learner assessment system that supports diversity, equity, and belonging in medical education. Their recommendations, published in Academic Medicine, expand on related recommendations from the 2020 conference on eliminating harmful bias and discrimination in health professions learning environments (see below). The 2022 recommendations include aligning assessment with core values; creating and providing faculty development programming in designing, implementing, and continuously improving equitable assessment; developing mechanisms for and removing barriers to co-creation with learners; and more.


2021 Conference: COVID-19 and the Impact on Medical and Nursing Education

At this conference, faculty, learners, leaders, and other experts in HPE shared their experiences from the first year of the pandemic and identified key lessons to be prioritized going forward. The consensus recommendations, published in Academic Medicine, call for a wide variety of action steps—from expediting the implementation of competency-based, interprofessional HPE to prioritizing institutional adoption of holistic review of HPE applicants to better preparing for the next crisis that may require redeployments of learners to unfamiliar roles.


2020 Conference: Addressing Harmful Bias and Eliminating Discrimination in Health Professions Learning Environments

Participants in the 2020 Macy conference developed recommendations to address harmful bias and eliminate discrimination in the nation’s health professions schools. Among the recommendations—developed by a group of more than 40 HPE leaders, faculty, and students—is the need for formal health disparities curricula and anti-racism training programs for faculty and learners.


2018 Conference: Improving Environments for Learning in the Health Professions

In April 2018, the Macy Foundation hosted a conference to identify the elements of optimal health professions learning environments and recommend actions needed to better align them with patient needs and societal goals for better health. The comprehensive recommendations are addressed to governance board members, executive leaders, faculty members, policymakers, accreditation organization leaders, and educational researchers; all are called to support and sustain exemplary learning environments.


2017 Conference: Achieving Competency-Based, Time-Variable Health Professions Education

The 2017 Macy Foundation conference explored the potential and examined the current state of competency-based, time-variable HPE. During the conference, health professions educators in medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, as well as experts in educational theory and reform, medical residents, and education and residency program accreditors, developed recommendations to accelerate the implementation of competency-based, time-variable HPE.


2016 Conference: Registered Nurses: Partners in Transforming Primary Care

In 2016, the Macy Foundation conference explored opportunities to increase the nation’s primary care capacity by expanding the role of registered nurses (RNs). Conferees—including more than 40 leaders in primary care, representing academic nursing and medicine, health care delivery organizations, professional nursing associations, health care philanthropy, nursing students, and others—generated actionable recommendations around the potential for RNs to help meet the needs of primary care.


2015 Conference: Enhancing Health Professions Education through Technology

In April 2015, the Macy Foundation hosted a conference on technology in HPE. During the conference, participants developed recommendations for health professions schools and health care organizations around the use of existing and emerging technologies to enhance health professions education and build a continuously learning health system.


2014 Conference: Partnering with Patients, Families, and Communities: An Urgent Imperative for Health Care

The 2014 conference brought together patients, leaders of patient advocacy organizations, health care educators, and leaders of health care organizations to make recommendations for the urgent reform of both health professions education and health care practice in partnership with patients, families, and communities. The purpose was to help change the focus of ongoing discussions about transforming health care by placing patients and their families at the center of the conversation.


2013 Conference: Transforming Patient Care: Aligning Interprofessional Education with Clinical Practice Redesign

The 2013 Macy conference sought to connect clinical practice reforms with changes underway in HPE because, historically, the two have evolved and operated separately—as if they are not inextricably linked. The conference resulted in recommendations to align interprofessional education and collaborative, team-based clinical practice as a means to improve patient care and outcomes.


2012 Conference: Interprofessional Education

In 2012, the Macy Foundation convened all of its grantees involved in efforts to advance interprofessional education (IPE) for the purposes of sharing their work, including successes and challenges; identifying opportunities for collaboration; and discussing directions for future work in IPE. The conference monograph—recommendations were not produced at this meeting—provides an overview of the working sessions, panel discussions, and summaries of the grantees’ IPE work.


2011 Conference: Ensuring an Effective Physician Workforce for the United States #2: Recommendations for Graduate Medical Education to Meet the Needs of the Public

The second of two conferences on the future of graduate medical education (GME) brought together leaders from health care, academic medicine, and physician education in 2011. Co-sponsored by the Macy Foundation and the Association of Academic Health Centers, the meeting resulted in a set of sweeping recommendations regarding the content and format of GME to ensure that physicians are trained more effectively and efficiently to meet public needs. Among the proposed changes: engaging consumers in its design, reexamining old assumptions about how long doctors are required to undergo training, and training nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals together so that they emerge ready to provide care together.


2010 Conference: Ensuring an Effective Physician Workforce for America: Recommendations for an Accountable Graduate Medical Education System

In 2010, the Macy Foundation partnered with the Association of Academic Health Centers to co-sponsor the first of two conferences to develop recommendations regarding the future of graduate medical education (GME) in the United States. The goal of this first conference was to review the status of GME from a policy perspective, including the regulation, financing, and “sizing” of GME.


2010 Conference: Who Will Provide Primary Care And How Will They Be Trained?

The Macy Foundation assembled a diverse group of health professionals in 2010 to address a critical question in health care: who will provide primary care and how will they be trained? Participants were asked to put aside professional, organizational, and institutional biases to engage in a frank dialogue. During the conversation, participants identified overarching themes that led directly to recommendations designed to improve the training of all primary care providers for the benefit of all patients.


2009 Conference: Developing a Strong Primary Care Workforce

The Macy Foundation convened a meeting in 2009 to discuss the nation’s health care workforce. Individuals representing four organizations with expertise in primary care and prevention were in attendance. The meeting’s participants unanimously agreed that the ideal model for primary care in the 21st century would include extensive collaboration among teams of caregivers and that changes would be needed in health professionals’ education to achieve this goal.


2008 Conference: Revisiting the Medical School Educational Mission at a Time of Expansion

In October 2008—a time when existing medical schools were increasing their class sizes for the first time in 30 years and several new medical schools were being planned or launched—the Macy Foundation convened a conference to consider issues related to the mission of U.S. medical schools. In the conference recommendations report, the conferees advised that it was an ideal time for all medical schools to reassess their educational programs to ensure that they are meeting the health needs of society.


2007 Conference: Continuing Education in the Health Professions

Participants at the 2007 Macy Foundation conference explored issues related to continuing education (CE) in the health professions, which is essential to the provision of high-quality to all Americans. The resulting set of recommendations cover topics such as shifting to practice-based learning in CE, phasing out commercial financial support for CE, and creating a single CE accrediting organization for both medicine and nursing.