COLUMBUS — Dr. Ryan D. Kauffman, president of the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), has been appointed to serve two additional years as a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Commission on Continuing Professional Development for a term that began, Dec. 15, 2016, and will end Dec. 14, 2020.

The Commission on Continuing Professional Development is one of seven commissions that direct AAFP policies and programs. This commission works directly to support the AAFP’s strategic objective on clinical expertise (education) by supporting the lifelong learning of family physician members and other health care professionals. The goals of the commission are to guide the AAFP’s credit system and the academy’s provision of continuing medical education that helps members and other health care professionals demonstrate continuous improvement in knowledge, competence, practice performance and patient outcomes, as well as fulfill the educational requirements for licensure and certification.

In the past year, Kauffman started a direct primary care practice, Hickory Medical Direct Primary Care, in Bellefontaine, and prior to that served as medical director, president and practicing partner at Oakhill Medical Associates in West Liberty.

He has distinguished himself nationally, having served on the AAFP Commission on Resident and Student Issues and on the AAFP Commission on Membership and Member Services. As Ohio’s new physician delegate to the National Conference of Special Constituencies in 2009 and 2010, Kauffman served as new physician co-convener in 2001, as new physician delegate in 2011 and alternate delegate in 2010 to the AAFP Congress of Delegates, and was a finalist for the 2013 NCSC convener position.