Physicians and those they care for come together to explore state-of the-art science and the day-to-day reality of life affected by disease.
By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff in American Medical News, Nov. 3, 2008
Nicole Johnson, MPH, would like physicians to be a little more positive. And as a former beauty queen and current diabetes activist, she hopes that telling doctors this will enhance the care she and other patients receive.
Johnson was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1993, when she was a 19-year-old college sophomore. Her physician told her to drop out of school and stop entering beauty pageants. Those activities, he said, were now too stressful. She also should forget about bearing children.
"I was told my life was over ... and the worst part was that I believed it," she said, during a plenary session at the American Academy of Family Physicians' scientific assembly in San Diego, Sept. 17-21. After long-fought efforts to get her disease under control, she earned two master's degrees and won the 1999 Miss America Pageant. And she is a mother.
Johnson was one of several well-known people who detailed their experiences as part of the AAFP's new "Face of Disease" program. These lectures were paired with clinical insights by experts in the field.
"We wanted to try new types of learning, and this is one avenue we hadn't tried. We always hear from experts and family physicians. We never really get it from the patients," said Bradley P. Fox, MD, chair of the AAFP's subcommittee for scientific programming and a family physician in Erie, Pa.
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