You Are Among Your People Here
— Jennifer Dilts, DO, FAAMA, AAMA Board of Directors
Several years before learning acupuncture, I attended an academic medical conference. A colleague turned to me and excitedly said, “I’ve found my people!” I looked around the room and thought, “These are your people?” Everyone that I saw seemed stressed out and unfriendly. Then, in 2017, I attended my first AAMA conference, and I remembered my colleague’s comment. I had found my people! It’s hard to capture it in words, but at the AAMA conference people are excited to see each other. They smile and share knowledge and embrace differences. It feels like community, as cheesy as that sounds.
Friends gathered at the 2025 AAMA Annual Symposium
It’s hard to be an American right now, and it’s hard to be a physician right now. The world feels stressful and divisive. Physicians are increasingly squeezed for “more” — see more patients in a day, click more unhelpful boxes in the EMR, do more prior authorizations.
When I think of the AAMA, though, I picture my friends. We are the doctors that are doing things a little bit differently. We are doing “slow” medicine in a world that pushes fast. We are still touching patients, still doing things the way that healers have been doing them for hundreds of years. We are asking patients about sleep, mood, and energy. Practicing acupuncture makes me feel hopeful. For those 20 or so minutes that I’m with an acupuncture patient, I slow myself down: my breathing and my thoughts. I’m convinced that a hurried acupuncturist isn’t all that effective, so I slow myself down and give my patients the best version of myself. Invariably they are grateful. Thankful that I am doing something besides pills, that I am really seeing them and really present with them for the minutes that we spend together.
My work in the AAMA also feels hopeful and restorative. During AAMA board meetings and symposium committee meetings, I talk with anesthesiologists, family medicine physicians, neurologists, surgeons, and more. This coming together across specialties is increasingly rare. We need more of this — more of hearing each other’s stories and perspectives.
I sure don’t know how to fix our country or the practice of medicine, but I know that practicing acupuncture with my patients and with all of you makes things better. Thank you for being my friends and for learning with me. I can’t wait to see you in Denver in April!
