Candidate for election at 2025 Annual Meeting: Scott H. Pasichow, MD, MPH

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.

2025-2029

Dr. Pasichow has extensive experience in medical education innovation. As a medical student at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey, he helped organize regional and national events which earned him the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine’s Medical Student Award. During residency, he recognized the need for more physician involvement in legislative advocacy and organized an annual emergency medicine state advocacy day, which led to the creation of the Pasichow Advocacy Award for outstanding emergency medicine advocacy work by a medical student or resident in Rhode Island. As an attending, he has worked for two residency training programs: leading Journal Club and contributing to simulation while at Southern Illinois University in Springfield, Illinois, and expanding simulation and education in Emergency Medical Services at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. This work earned him the Illinois College of Emergency Physicians’ Downstate Members Services award during his time in Illinois. 

Dr. Pasichow also has a history of success within organized medicine. He is a former speaker of the AMA Resident and Fellow Section (RFS), and has been on multiple reference committees on Medical Education, Constitution Bylaws and Ethics, and has chaired the reference committee on Medical Service. He has also served on reference committees for the AMA-RFS, the Illinois State Medical Society, the Medical Society of New Jersey, and the American College of Emergency Physicians, where he also chaired a reference committee.

Dr. Pasichow’s experience is highlighted by the ability to coordinate collaboration and breed innovation. While his time in organized medicine started within the Emergency Medicine Residents Association, he used his position as the representative to the AMA-RFS to increase EMRA’s engagement and involvement with the AMA, and to bring attention to issues that might have started or been highlighted by emergency medicine, but actually impact all medical specialties. This relationship led to his authorship and passage of resolutions on core faculty protected time, use of technology in the residency application process, and scholarly activity. The resolution on scholarly activity was based on Boyer's model of scholarship, which was later included in the Emergency Medicine program requirements for the ACGME. 

Dr. Pasichow is a mentor to trainees throughout the AMA. He has helped organize networking events to strengthen the connection between the Emergency Medicine Section Council and medical trainees, and has been involved in numerous initiatives within the RFS and YPS. He has also been a champion for physician mental health and family leave equity by sharing his own story of struggle and triumph in both areas. He was featured on the AMA’s Moving Medicine video series for his work on breaking down stigma in physician mental health care, and used his experience as a new father who saw the disparity in training length between childbearing and non-child bearing parents to advocate for expanded family leave policies at ABEM and the ACGME. Dr. Pasichow has spoken at medical student panels on family planning for medical students, and has been a mentor for many medical students as they navigate the emergency medicine residency matching process. 

Dr. Pasichow’s experience serving as a liaison between organizations is well suited for the collaborative work that the Council on Medical Education does with the ACGME, ABMS and other medical education organizations. As a member of EMRA’s board of directors, he served on the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) Family Leave Task Force, and on ABEM’s Coalition to Oppose Medical Merit Badges. Dr. Pasichow has been working with ABEM on developing their new certifying exam.

Parenting is about anticipation. Knowing where you want your child to end up, and creating a pathway to get there, while anticipating the bumps along the way, and helping them learn to forge their own path. This is how our advocacy works as well. The AMA does not drive medical education forward by simply responding to what already exists, but by anticipating where medical education is going, and finding the best ways to get there smoothly. The ACGME is currently trialing competency-based residency advancement, and the AMA has led that charge since the Council on Medical Education’s 2014 report. The proliferation of AI and new funding challenges facing institutes of higher education, the future of medical education will be written by our AMA. This is not just about how our undergraduate and graduate medical education handle these challenges, but also about how continuing medical education shapes longitudinal learning for physicians in practice. 

Dr. Pasichow has an eye for these opportunities as well: creating a billing and coding online curriculum for the American College of Emergency Physicians which lead him to be a senior editor on Practice Essentials: a 10 part curriculum on the business of medicine for trainees and early career physicians. This is the kind of innovation that Dr. Pasichow will bring to his work on the Council on Medical Education.

• Visit the AMA elections page for information on other candidates running for office.
• Find up to date information for the June Annual Meeting of the HOD.