So my name is Fabrice Czernecki. I'm the Chief Medical Officer for the Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This presentation has nothing to do with the government, with TSA, and the views are mine, not even ACOM. Now, I was asked to give this talk because I've been on the ACOM Fellowship Examiner Committee for, I think, three years. I've been the Vice Chair for the past two years, and starting tomorrow, yes, I'm going to be the Chairman for two years. And here you have Dr. Baker, who has also been a member on and off for quite some time and is the incoming Vice Chair. And my goal is to guide you through the process, like the process for you to apply, but also to maximize your chances of becoming a fellow. And I'll tell you right now, the end, if you need to remember one thing, what you do is not the most important. What's the most important is what you say you do, how you articulate what you did. I think we fail more people because they don't write clearly what they did, they don't write clearly their contribution. Maybe the ACOM forum is not the best, or we actually changed it, but you clearly need to read the question and answer it. And I will tell you, answer it twice, at least. I think you have five, I counted, you have about five opportunities to answer the question. I think, answer twice, maybe more, but don't answer once. Don't assume people get it. Okay, that's the standard ACOM ad. They give you a short overview of the rules and also you get a QR code. And by the way, there is a handout that I put together that really has all the substance that you need, I think, to have a successful fellowship application. So we'll go over the criteria, the application process, but then I really want to spend time on the tips. And by the way, when I say, you know, what you write, but don't be creative. Every year we find one or two people who are, you know, they go beyond their experience. That obviously will not fly. Okay, that's the definition of the fellow per the bylaws. Hopefully if you are here, you already made up your mind that it was worth your time. It is currently required to be on the board. Beyond that, it's mostly a professional recognition. Every year or so, we look at ways to make the fellowship degree certification more valuable, but the main reason is you can run for the board and you have that professional recognition. And I will add, it is not very difficult to become a fellow, but you need to follow the process. Okay, so first criteria, that's non-negotiable. You need to be an active physician member for three years. So it can be an advanced practice provider. It can be a resident or I don't know if we still have new, new, new, recent graduate. That doesn't count. You need to pay the full price for three years. Then you need to have a board certification and I will go over the criteria for international physicians. So the easiest, you're board certified in occupational medicine. If you are not, you need to get a certain amount of ACOM CME hours. So it's 100 hours if you have another board certification and no MPH or 50 hours if you have the MPH. By the way, the easiest way to get there, you buy the NCOR version of AOHC. I think one NCOR probably gets you 100 hours. You see the CME has to be earned within the past five years. Now if you are not board certified or if you are board certified by a non-ABMS board, you may not become a fellow. And I think they ask you to certify. I'm the nosy guy. Yes, I found one applicant who had a non-ABMS board and obviously, you know, that did not go. If you are an international applicant, so if you are an international applicant, they won't take the first criterion. They won't take the board certification in OEM, but they will take any board certification and then the hours. So 50 hours if you have an MPH, 100 hours if you don't have an MPH. Now my tip, if you are an OEM specialist in your home country or wherever you get trained, you don't write it. It doesn't cost anything. It won't give you credit on one of these criteria listed, but it will certainly make your application look good. But then the difficulty for you is then to explain your board certification and your MPH. And that's not easy. And that's something we struggle with. And I think the easiest, obviously you need to explain. Look, I recently went through something similar. I did not train in the U.S. At least part of my training was not in the U.S. And let's say that the American system in general is not very friendly to credentials that are not in English. So what I personally did is I went on the internet and I Googled one of my degrees and I said, look, here is what Wikipedia says. It's not me, but it's Wikipedia. You know, I also had my school write something and I explained also what it was. So I think the more stuff you have, the better it is. But if you can go to the ACOM directory, if you can find an ACOM fellow who has the same certification, the same credentials, have them write something. You know, it doesn't have to be the actual letter of, well, that will probably qualify as the letter of recommendation. But if you could have somebody say, look, I became a fellow three years ago. I'm exactly the same. Do you really think we're going to say no? Of course not. If you don't have that, at least if you can have a letter of recommendation from somebody who knows your training, ideally from that country, who can explain also. So, you know, if the explanation is only coming from you, we could say, look, you're biased. Obviously you're going to say you did everything. But if you can have a third party, let's say an academic from that country who can explain, I think that's also a good idea. By the way, every time I say explain, the shortest probably the better, but hit everything. You know, this is not about three pages. We have no attention span, okay? But hit the right keywords. They are on the, so board certification. Why is that a board certification? What is it that you have? Why is it a master's in public health? Okay, it was two years of full-time training in public health, something like that. No, we don't call it a master's. We call it a diploma, but that's what it is. And if you continue, you get a doctorate, something like that. By the way, to make my own pathway a little bit more interesting, the public health degree I had, which was conferred by the French government, doesn't exist anymore. Luckily, it's still in Wikipedia. But there was a European harmonization, so they got rid of a lot of the names. Okay, then, that's the sticky one. And again, don't worry about taking pictures. Your handout has that and probably even more. You need to explain your contributions. And the rule, you see that top sentence, contribution to ACOM or to the field of OEM. And that's the piece you need to articulate. Now, I will tell you that traditionally, contribution to ACOM way more. But also because they are easier to evaluate. You know, if you say you've been a component chair for two years, yeah, that's okay. You're good to go. We're done. But if you say, and you know, I've helped some screening programs in the community, that's kind of vague. I'm not going to tell you it's not as good. But first, it's more difficult to explain. But the other one, I will tell you that the committee might be not as easy to accept that. But I will tell you, Dr. Baker and I, we talked and we clearly understand we need to work on that. You know, contribution to ACOM, that is not a requirement. It's definitely nice to have. It's probably better. It will make it easier. But it's not a requirement. Okay. Now let's look at the rest. It has to be volunteer service beyond your job and beyond your residency. So typically you give a presentation during your residency that will not count. Now let's say you write an article that you start during residency that may or may not count. That depends on what the committee decides. If it's clearly work you did beyond, like you start in residency but you continue beyond, write it down. That's the piece you need to explain. The next bullet tells you all the contribution to ACOM. And components and sections probably the easiest if you don't know anybody and you're starting but you get the other ones. We will talk about the contribution to the field of OEM. Now for each contribution, that's my personal advice to you, but I think it is slowly making to the new ACOM application form. Write all of that. So you write the name of the contribution. I was the member of XYZ. I started on that date and I finished on that date. That was the name of the group. This is what the group did. And this is what I did in the group. Again, make it very clear. I say probably should write it twice. You don't have to write everything twice, but I would definitely mention something twice. Okay, that's the contribution. I think that's the quote from the website. But you see what they are. Teaching, presentations, public advocacy, publications, committee service. Again, beyond your daily work responsibilities. I will tell you there are two exceptions to that. There are always exceptions. In general, the committee has been friendly to the contribution. And the other one is military. I can safely say that non-military government service does not count for that. If it's paid, if it's your regular job. And the other one is military. Any questions, comments so far? You mean you see me? You need to provide a printout. No, no, no. So the AECOM website will do that. But you need to provide that AECOM printout. There's a question. Hi, so I'm a private practice. And obviously I don't have opportunities to work with residents in medical school and things like that. But I do go to my companies and do training, education, and lifting and things like that. Do those kinds of activities count? Is that paid? Is that something you charge for? Yeah. I mean sometimes people sometimes, you know, sometimes people just as a favor to the company because I'm seeing increasing work counts that aren't met one-on-one. And then I will call them, I will let them know that, hey, I'm seeing a lot of, you know, work-related injuries that I'm seeing at the clinic. So these are my companies that send their people to my clinic. Oh, but you're not paid by the company. We can't give you an answer because this discussion, they go to the committee. And let's say the two of us might say that's good, but the other people might say no. I mean, I'm not arguing that it's like occupational medicine one-on-one what we do in the school. And if it is not there as a criteria, then I will pay. If you can clearly separate from, you see, the normal scope of your daily work. Okay. This is, let's look, you see that, where is that? Voluntary service. But you need to spell it out. If it's not voluntary service, it won't go. Yes, sir. If you have fellowship in what I call it is like, you know, United Kingdom, Australia, or Ireland, what happens up there? Again, I didn't mention it. It's up to you to explain why it meets one of these criteria. My understanding, I mean, I have, I'm actually, you know, I used to be licensed in Britain, but I never worked there. My understanding is some of these, uh, you know, FRCP, MRCP actually do meet, they're very similar to a US board certification, but I, I tell you, if you come with UK credentials, that's probably the, the ones where we have the most experience. That's probably the ones where you really don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Um, what if you had some, some sort of outstanding award, um, for a research dissertation you did, that's part of your master's degree, not an MPH. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So again, it depends. Um, I think if you get the awards, that mean you, you, you did that, um, how do you call that? Substantial contribution, you know? It's not the, it's not the master's award from the university, but the award from the faculty and the application. It, it won't replace an MPH, but it might meet at least partially the contribution to the field of OEM. But it's not the fact that you have an award, it's because you did something that got you the award. So I would explain both. Here's what I did. Now again, if you did that during your training time, it's not as good. And then say, by the way, it was recognized, so I got that award. Okay, so let's talk about the application process. First thing that's not there is start early. It looks like ACOM will open the application in June. Couldn't give me an exact date. And probably fairly early, let's say early to mid-June. Uh, because if you apply early and your application goes to the committee and we have questions and we have time to get the answer for you before the, the deadline. Okay, so you go to the website, that website's still good. You pay a fee and it's a one time fee and my understanding if you get rejected and you're deferred, so you can reapply next year. We're not charging you the next year. Okay, then there is a form. And I know we redid the form, but the new form wasn't posted when I did that, so I'm not going to show you the new form. And the new form, the information I think is the same, but it's the way we, we wrote the question, I think it's, uh, we're looking for more clarity. The form has the contribution to ACOM, but not the contribution to the field of OEM. Because again, we, we expect that the contribution to ACOM, this is a very easy statement to write. You know, I was in that committee for so many years, that's all. By the way, I don't think that's enough. I think you still need to write in your narrative exactly what you did and what your group did. Okay, then you have, so that's, that's the first time where you can, you have the opportunity to write what you did. Then you have your CV. That's the second time where you can write what you did. And I tell you, of, of all the applications I see, CV is by far the most important. I mean, the informative. Right or wrong, but that's where I get, that's where I get my information. Now I typically start, I start with the form, because if, if you meet, if you meet everything with the form, we're done. I'm not going to look at anything else. Um, but the CV is probably where you need to spend the most energy. Now, we, you know, don't, don't write, uh, you know, your hobbies and what you, if you did stuff that's clearly not OEM or, um, stuff you did in college and med school, you know, really that's not the point. But going back to these contributions, you know, you saw that list. Publications, teaching, committees, volunteer, write it down. Okay, then you have a narrative statement. A narrative statement is supposed to be specifically for the contribution to the field of OEM. But if you had service to ECOM, put it there. So three places. And finally you get two letters of recommendation that you have to submit, at least one from a fellow. Now the expectation is if, let's talk about contribution to ECOM, make it easy. So let's say you were in an ECOM committee or activity section, you want that letter of recommendation to come from whoever was chairing, I mean, at some leadership position or is a recognizable name from that group. But then, obviously they're going to write, you know, Dr. Joe is great guy. Okay. Of course, Dr. Joe is a great guy, that's why you're writing that letter. But I'm going back to one or two sentences on these contributions. Now contribution to the field of OEM, same, if you work with somebody, that might also be a letter to ask. So be judicious in the letters of recommendation. This is not just about somebody who says you are, you know, you're a really nice person to work with, this is not an employment application, but somebody who can explain what your contributions were. So I'm going back to, if you write it four or five times, they will probably, which is us, we will probably get the message. Okay, so that's the letter of recommendation. Okay, then you need to submit, you see medical license, board certification, we need to see an expiration date, which is tricky because some countries don't have that. So maybe there is not, maybe you need to explain. Maybe get a letter from the board. MPH, it's up to you to submit a copy of the, I think they ask for the copy of the degree, I don't think we ask for a copy of the transcript. Now the CME, the ACOM CME transcript, you need to go to the website, so you log in into your account and you see my CME and it's a PDF. And then you submit that to ACOM by email or fax. The deadline is usually around, I think early to mid-November. They have not opened the application for, so I guess, for later this year. So I guess you, it's the 2025 cycle. Because if you apply now or you pass, you'll become a fellow in May 2025. So you do have time, but you can run out of time and I think there is a benefit from applying early. Okay, then the application is reviewed by staff. They do a first triage. I don't know if they ever reject. I don't think so, but I guess they could. Then it goes to the committee of fellowship examiners. We look at each application and we meet, we discuss, and then we decide. Or we can send back for more information. We can defer. Yeah, that's pretty much the two outcomes. I mean, we could do kind of short-term deferral, which is your way before November and we'll send back to you and ask a question. You know, did you actually write that article? Were you a co-author of that article? Or you deferred by, for a year. And then you will get a longer letter explaining why you deferred and what is it that you don't meet. And there will be recommendations on how to get to the fellowship. Okay, then there is an approval by the board. They typically defer to the committee on fellowship examiners. And after the ceremony, at AOHC, you, you receive your fellow medal from the, uh, ACOM president. That was that ceremony this year was on, uh, was on Sunday. Sunday night. Okay, there is an FAQ and a contact email on the website. Okay, so a couple tips for success. I think you probably hit on them already, but, you know, make it very easy for the readers to understand. You know, don't, don't make any, anybody guess anything. So that's, these are all the contributions to OEM that I could think of that if you have any of that, I want you to spell it out. But don't just write one word. I mean, write, write three sentences maybe or more. You know, even if the publication, you write the, you know, the publication, uh, um, you know, entry, I, I would explain a little bit. You, you're not losing anything by putting a little bit more, uh, effort at, uh, explaining what you did. Again, what, what the group did and what you did personally. Presentations, look, we all present. So don't, don't lose that. That's probably the easiest thing that we all did. Again, residency probably doesn't count, but any presentation that's relevant to OEM, put it there. Okay, that's the, uh, that's the ACOM, um, contribution. So get a letter of recommendation from, uh, wherever you worked. Now, we occasionally get some of the, you see the bottom two, and that's spelled out in the application. Mere membership, no, not membership in a committee or a council, but a membership in a section or, or component. That does not count. Now, can you put it in your CV? Yes, I would put it there, but you're not getting points for, I mean, that's not a contribution. And same, you come to AOHC, you've been to five AOHC, might count in your CME, but you're not getting points for, for contribution for that. Now, if you need volunteering with ACOM, the first step is talk to your component and section leadership and see what they have for you. Now, it could be a title, like an officer or a director, but also it could be a specific project where you are interested in, in volunteering. Now, for ACOM position, I'm going to show you on the, on the website, um, come, couple of the key points. You see there is a deadline, so we're beyond the deadline. They have ambassadors right now, and I think they might have one more, but create the profile tomorrow. So that's where it is. So you go to the ACOM community, so you go to the ACOM website, you log in, you go to the community, by the way, you need to sign in again, have to enter your password, but you need to sign in again, and then you see get involved, and you need to click on both. First becoming a volunteer, so becoming a volunteer, you see, that's the volunteer profile, but then after that you click on volunteer opportunities. I don't think there is a way yet to be, to learn about them, but if you have the volunteer profile, you're more likely to be contacted. Get the easiest if you haven't had any involvement with a national ACOM, is talk to your, if you are a member of a section or a component, contact your leadership, see what, what they, they have to, to help you. But I will tell you, with the right timing and the right interest, we are always looking for volunteers. Now that may not work, let's say you want to apply, uh, for next year, and you have absolutely nothing, and you can't find anything with sections and components, volunteering with the national ACOM might be, might be late, because you also need a certain duration in service, uh, but it would definitely work for the following year. So I'm done with that, my presentation, I want to show you, I started as an ACOM member 18 years ago, been to every single AOHC, I got my dogs through ACOM. This is Sophie, she's 7 years old. And, uh, you know, I'll tell you about the power of occupational medicine, if you go to the website of my employer, TSA.gov, and you type my name, you will see Sophie's picture. God. Yes. Fabrizio, great presentation, and, um, thank you for all this information. Uh, I learned stuff that even wasn't in the bylaws in the application. So that's great, thank you. Uh, particularly about how the committee works, and Beth, thank you for your comments. Um, I had one question about something that you mentioned in the very beginning, and I wasn't sure if it was a joke or exactly what you were referencing, but you had said you need to, uh, pay, was the verb that you used, uh, for three years. And I wasn't sure if that was like, kind of like a social pay, like an emotional pay, or a financial, yeah, that one, yeah. Uh, for three years. And if so, is that the transaction, three years, or is it at the time of application, or the due date of the application, or the fellowship date at the subsequent AOHC? I, I can give you an official ACOM interpretation, but since I'm the chair, I can give you my interpretation. Thank you. I think if you reach, no, first, you, you definitely, by the time we say yes, you need to have paid three years. Yeah. And as long as you have done your three years by May, I think you're good to go, or close to three years. Yeah. Uh, does the same hold true for other requirements of this, particularly board certification, whose results will come out after the application deadline, but before the committee's final decisions are made, and the award is presented? So I would submit, I would submit your application, and, and say, here is when I expect to be board certified, as long, uh, because isn't the date in February? In January or February, right. Yeah, I, again, I can't tell you which way that's going to go, but I will tell you there's a good chance the answer will be no. Thank you. And I, I don't think we ever had that question. Like, is there a board certified by the time the committee looks into it? Yeah, but we're not seeing it in January, that's the, um, oh, we are. Well, look, I would say try, submit. I mean, there is no, there is no, no downside in submitting. And I don't think we ever had that question. I don't think we ever had Yeah, because the question is what is the last day we are meeting? I know the past cycle we had issues with basically appeals and we just could not meet. So as long as we are meeting after your results are in, I think you're OK. Thank you very much, Fabricio, for a wonderful presentation. Just to clarify, so in terms of the different routes, if one is OEM board certified, then I saw that it's sort of you don't need to the MPH and the other are different routes. So if one is OEM board certified, do you still think it's best, like good form to include the MPH transcript or degree or not necessarily? I would not put your transcript or your degree, but I would put it in a CV. OK, OK, great. Thank you. What is the deadline to apply, like for 25? Again, AECOM has not started the application process. I've asked the staff for the dates. They would not give them to me, but I will tell you last year it was, I think it was early to mid-November. My expectation would be the same. So they should open by, they told me very soon after AOHC, get the websites the same, you'll see all the dates. Again, I'm not privy to that, so I don't know. But yeah, I asked. But I don't see why it would be different. And you have time, but start early. I don't see a need to go back almost 10 years. Is that invalidated? It doesn't count. Again, as long as you get ACOM CME, ACOM CME, that's on your ACOM transcript, it's good to go. And they have an FAQ on what's ACOM CME. The AOHC NCORP gives you, Dave, how many hours of CME you get from NCORP? So, yeah, for the conference, it's about a max of around 25, 26, and that's if you count every available hour, and people cannot claim from maybe, they can't claim 30 minutes from one session, 30 minutes from the other if they hop between sessions, but when you bring in NCORP, it's upwards of 100 CME hours. Yeah. So one NCORP gives you, you know, you meet the criterion. One what? You buy, you know, after AOHC, you buy that. You have to do it. And yes, we check. So the other thing I'd say is the components often have positions that are useful. I think ACOM currently has one position, but I don't know about some of the other committees in the data centers that I've worked with. And if you call in here for something, even if you just call in here today, you know, by this fall, you'll show that, please, you're interested. You may need a third one. You may need a fourth one. You may need a fifth one. You may need a sixth one. You may need a seventh one. You may need a eighth one. You may need a ninth one. You may need a tenth one. But I would say, if you're going to volunteer, the hard ones to get on are the councils. I think that's a really good point, and I also think, you know, if you're interested, go contribute to ACOM. Or, at some point, if you can be a fellow, and you want people to contribute to be a fellow, it just takes more documentation. And sometimes, if you can't tell if you're for certification from another country, it's equivalent. We'll go back and ask more questions. Sometimes, you know, we will go back and take more information. So I think that's a really good point. And it's like any other meeting, depending on who's in the room that day, and how many

Dr. Fabrice Czernecki

Chief Medical Officer

TSA

American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

ACOM fellowship

board certification

CME hours

application timeline