Brandi White

Every January, millions of us ignore the prevailing criticism that New Year’s resolutions don’t work, and we resolve once again to get healthy, get organized, get out of debt, and so on. Why do we do this? According to one set of researchers, we are motivated by the “fresh start effect”: “The popularity of New Year’s resolutions suggests that people are more likely to tackle their goals immediately following salient temporal landmarks [e.g., the outset of a new year].

With tremendous change taking place in health care, the mood among family physicians is anxious, but there are reasons to be hopeful. Almost 50 years ago, in 1969, family medicine was officially recognized as a medical specialty in the United States.