Each year, ACEP’s Council elects new leaders for the College at its annual meeting. When it meets Sept. 5-6 in Salt Lake City, the Council, which represents 53 Chapters, 40 Sections of membership, the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine, the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors, the Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association, and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, will select a President-Elect, four members to the ACEP Board of Directors, a Council Speaker, and Council Vice Speaker.

Here’s how each candidate answered questions submitted by ACEP staff for publishing in ACEP Now. Candidates in each category are listed in alphabetical order.

PRESIDENT-ELECT

Candidates for ACEP President-Elect responded to this prompt:

In one sentence, describe what you would like your legacy to be at the conclusion of your term as president and then explain why.

Jeffrey M. Goodloe, MD, FACEP

Current Professional Positions: Attending Emergency Physician, Hillcrest Medical Center; Professor and EMS Section Chief, University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine; Chief Medical Officer, EMS System for Metropolitan Oklahoma City and Tulsa

Internships and Residency: Emergency Medicine Residency, Methodist Hospital of Indiana / Indiana University School of Medicine (1998); EMS Fellowship, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (1999)

Medical Degree: MD, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (1995)

Response: Emergency physicians are beyond essential—we are exceptional! I don’t want that as my legacy; I want that as our legacy. A shared legacy where we, as emergency physicians, reclaim value that has been stripped from our profession over decades. Why does this matter? Because every issue we fight for—fair reimbursement, workplace safety, scope of practice, and professional dignity, to highlight those among many—hinges on how we are valued. Since 2001, our reimbursement has dropped by 33 percent when adjusted for inflation.

That is not just a number, it is a stark measure of how our education, training, skill, and commitment have been systematically undervalued by both government and commercial payers. And that loss ripples out. It affects our ability to repay educational loans, care for our families, contribute to our communities, and plan for our futures.

We practice in overcrowded emergency departments, forced to do more with less, while our voices are too often ignored by health systems focused elsewhere. We are treated as interchangeable, as line items on a staffing grid, at risk for being replaced not only by other physicians, but by less-trained practitioners given legislative authority to supplant us. That’s not just a staffing issue; it is a threat to patient safety and the integrity of our profession.