A Countercultural Heritage: Rediscovering the Relationship-Centered and Social Justice Roots of Family Medicine-A Perspective from the Keystone IV Conference.

The 2015 G. Gayle Stephens Keystone conference convened a cohort of primary care professionals to discuss what promises personal physicians will make to their patients going forward. New physicians were prompted to rediscover the foundational values of and historic context for family medicine. At the heart of this rediscovery was learning of the writings and teachings of Dr. G. Gayle Stephens, a founder of family medicine who emphasized the essentiality of relationship-centered care and social justice to the new specialty. Dr. Stephens viewed family medicine as being in a countercultural relationship to mainstream medicine, as family medicine fought for justice and equity in an inequitable and fragmented health care system. Here we argue that by reaffirming and renewing this countercultural heritage the new generation of family physicians will have better clarity in approaching the many challenges in health care today. Particularly for trainees and new physicians, the historic lens offered by Dr. Stephens's writing and other foundational documents allows us to better see ourselves in a trajectory of ongoing health care reform.