AMA Elections

Candidate for election at 2025 Annual Meeting: Lou C. Edje, MD, MHPE

| 6 Min Read

Elections will be held at the Annual Meeting of the House of Delegates on June 10, 2025.

Officers and five councils are elected by the American Medical Association House of Delegates (HOD) at the Annual Meeting. The elections are conducted during a special election session under the supervision of the Committee on Rules and Credentials and the chief teller, who are appointed by the speakers. The speaker and vice speaker are responsible for overall administration of the elections. Voting is conducted by secret ballot.


Lou C. Edje, MD

2025-2029

 


Dr. Edje is a board-certified family physician, chair of the family medicine review committee of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and on the executive committee of the American Medical Association’s Council on Medical Education. She was on the writing group for the new requirements for family medicine training in the United States. She is an Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine alumna who was the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians 2012 Family Physician of The Year. She was the recipient of the 2022 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award from the University of Cincinnati and the Distinguished Humanitarian Alumni Award from Michigan Medicine. 

She started at Michigan State University at age 16 where she received a bachelor of science degree in physiology. She was president of her medical school student body at the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS) then completed her family medicine training, with honors, followed by 13 years in private practice and health system leadership. She subsequently returned to her residency program to serve as program director for seven years. She has since supported the founding of two family medicine residency programs. Dr. Edje has a masters in health professions education from the University of Michigan. 

As senior associate dean for medical education at UMMS, she supports the medical education of 680 medical students, 1,300 house officers and 3,500 faculty as well as medical education at the Ann Arbor VA. Her interests include mitigating bias in assessment, master adaptive learners and medical education policy. She is the generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI) medical education champion overseeing the education workgroup of the Michigan Medicine gen-AI taskforce.

Lou C. Edje, MD, Officiating medical school commencement

Dr. Edje became an active member of the American Medical Association as a first-year medical student in 1992 and has been involved ever since. Initially being mentored by the Organized Medical Staff Section, where she subsequently served on its governing council as a member-at-large, Dr. Edje learned about developing ideas with colleagues of diverse thoughts on a multitude issues; understanding the nuances of the resolution process; honing the skills needed to testify succinctly, and collaborating to fashion policy which could be carried forward to enact impactful solutions to complex health problems. She has actively presented testimony on behalf of her home states and the Great Lakes States Coalition, as well as providing testimony for the Council on Medical Education, a council dedicated to responding to the spectrum of challenging issues encountered in medical education. Most recently, Dr. Edje served as chair of the nominating committee of the AMA Council on Medical Education, reviewing over 2,000 pages of nominating materials to provide the Board of Trustees with the best possible slate of candidates to consider for appointment to over 42 medical entities. 

With what Dr. Edje calls the “Baseball Cap Theory,” rather than wearing multiple competing hats, she wears only one baseball cap with multiple wedges that complement each other. Following this theory, she also serves as chair of the family medicine review committee of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. These two national positions serve not only the institutions in which they exist but also inform her daily work at the University of Michigan by sharing of ideas and collaboration with a vast network of colleagues and interested stakeholders.

Lou C. Edje, MD, Academic scholar

Dr. Edje is passionate about the crisis of the physician workforce and its impact on teaching in a variety of clinical learning environments. Our workforce shortage is increasing the tension between productivity in the tripartite missions of education, clinical care and research in academic medical centers. Developing an academic relative value model helping institutions ascribe clear value to education is an opportunity for the AMA to ease the aforementioned tension for our educators. 

Also, the AMA’s work on precision education ("PrEd," including the PrEd Grant Program) can help decrease administrative burden for faculty and make education more learner-centric. There is potential for generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI) to shoulder some of the clinical work in such areas as clinical decision-making, chart review and documentation, and practice management, to name a few. Physician educators and learners can also benefit from gen-AI in areas like assessment: assessment of applicants, assess learners’ knowledge, assess learners’ skills, assisting learners in assessing themselves, assist assessors in documenting assessments, assist assessors in education strategy, assess assessors, and assess validity of assessment tools. Secondly, learners, faculty and institutions in our current uncertain health care ecosystem could benefit from continued legislative advocacy of the AMA. 

The quality of a leader’s response to change has a chance to contribute substantially to the stability and longevity of institutions. How medical education leaders manage expected and unexpected change directly influences learner-facing programs and learning environments. It is Dr. Edje’s privilege be a key part of expected change such as serving on the Common Program Requirements Taskforce of the ACGME, devoting time to think deeply about the foundational aspects of educating 160,000 trainees across all specialties over the next 10 years. She is also a key part of an organized approach to unexpected change, as an enthusiastic member of almost 600 physicians who travel to our nation’s capital with their white coats to deliver a focused message of advocacy and our unique stories to our legislators every February. Managing the tumult and turbulence of unexpected change as it impacts our learners and teams, is a role in which Dr. Edje thrives. Her authentic leadership style has served her well for over 30 years of managing change. She is a clear and timely communicator, listening to include diverse opinions. She values transparency and growth mindset as she navigates her teams through new and challenging situations.

Lou C. Edje, MD, Advocacy

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