Myself and the outgoing Vice President of SOMA as I receive my award of recognition for my service as Website Director for National SOMA.
It’s been a wild ride keeping up with my local chapter as President while also being the National Website Director this past year. Now, as I pass the baton to a new Director and a new President, both extremely competent, I find myself wondering where I will be next. Of course with my Part 1 exams in the very and frighteningly near future, probably not that much. I have some exciting thoughts for the coming year and I look forward to seeing how they turn out.
The SOMA Conference in Washington DC this past weekend was extremely successful: My extremely talented National Liaison at RowanSOM’s SOMA Chapter was awarded with the Officer of the Year Award out of all the various national applicants, and I could not be more proud of her. Our Chapter was also given the honor of winning the Region 1 Excellence in Community Service Award due to our involvement in the Halloween for the Hungry project and our many mini-med-school events.
I was also a major author and contributor to the passage of the resolution to the House of Delegates that will hopefully change SOMA’s provided insurance policy into one that meets the minimum requirement by the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index by offering at least one policy in the future that provides treatment that meets the Standards of Care as established by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. This is a major step in the establishment of equal rights for transgender osteopathic medical students, and I am both honored and excited that I was able to play a major authorship role in this resolution by SOMA. I have attached the final text of the resolution below.
I was also involved with the conference planning this spring, creating a SOMA Conference App that has been well received by those members that attended the event! It was quite an experience in planning and working with the conference center and SOMA’s own conference organizers, and quite different than my work on the Empowering Future Physicians Conference at RowanSOM in the fall. My final act as Website Director was also to be involved with livestreaming the House of Delegates from Washington DC to all the resolution authors and SOMA members that could not attend. This event was recorded with YouTube and can be viewed in its entirety, including Yours Truly making an impassioned defense of my ultimately rejected Defense of Residency Placement resolution to the House of Delegates and other dramatic moments.
Overall this has been an exciting and superb way to wrap up my SOMA experience, and I look forward to what the future will bring!
[gview file=”http://Matt.Flamenbaum.net/SOMA/Resolution_S-14-04_AMENDED.pdf” height=”700px” width=”100%” save=”1″]
