It has been a great honor and privilege to serve as AACP President during the past year. My experience has surpassed my expectations. Many individuals have commented about the passion I demonstrate for what I do and for my students. I am a firm believer that passion is important both in our personal and professional lives, and we must find outside sources, such as music, nature, and literature, to fuel our passion. Although passion has many different definitions and synonyms, the one that resonates most with me is a strong and barely controllable emotion. I hope my passion as an educator has come through in my communications to the membership throughout my tenure as president. I guess it has to do with being a Boilermaker all my life as we tend to get fired up when pursuing our passion.
I have had the opportunity to work with an outstanding Board of Directors (BOD) and a very talented AACP staff. I have learned so much more about what makes this organization tick and all of the work that goes on behind the scenes. My professional circle has expanded greatly with the many educators and practitioners I met during my tenure. One of the highlights has been my participation as one of your representatives to the Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners (JCPP) where the pharmacy profession is banding together to establish the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process (PPCP) as the model for providing pharmacy services to patients, promote provider status for pharmacists, and work to establish a nationwide standard for technician education and training.
I am very happy to report that the Association continues to make great progress in implementing the 2016 strategic plan, first drafted under Past President Joe DiPiro’s chairmanship. Initiatives expanded dramatically, like Pharmacy Is Right-4-Me, during the past two years as we work to enrich the applicant pipeline. Others will continue to be implemented and enhanced. While the number of applicants continues to be a challenge at many of our institutions, it is important to keep in mind that the process of solidifying the pipeline is a marathon, not a sprint, and this priority continues to be the highest priority of the Association.
I am happy to report that there has been significant progress during the past year regarding strategic priority #2: Creating a New Portrait of Pharmacists and Pharmacy Careers. This priority is key to changing the public image of pharmacy, expanding understanding of our diverse and impactful role, and in making further progress to attract young, talented students into the profession of pharmacy. Our JCPP partners and others are very excited about the initiatives AACP has taken to lead this effort.
Last summer we engaged our network of Brand Ambassadors in the #HealthyStartsHere campaign, which increased our social media following on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Last fall we launched the new AACP website, which is intuitive and user-friendly. And in January we began planning the national pharmacy awareness campaign, which is launching now.
During this past year I have witnessed the roll out of numerous member services that have greatly enhanced both the internal functioning of AACP and the external face of the organization. These initiatives are aligned with strategic priority #5: Member Services, and strategic priority #8: Infrastructure, Technology, and Knowledge Management. Notable accomplishments include the launch of AACP Connect as one of our members’ primary means of communication and information sharing in our councils, sections, SIGs, and communities. On top of that and the website reboot, AACP switched to a new association management software system, which houses our member data and services like meeting registration.
I would be remiss if I did not mention member engagement during the past year. We currently stand at 4,532 members with a record number of members participating in our councils, sections, SIGs, and committees and there have been an amazing portfolio of webinars. As our organization has grown, we have been challenged to manage the huge number of submissions for programs and posters at our Annual Meeting. The BOD has taken this concern very seriously and has worked with our talented meetings staff to make modifications to allow for a greater number of programming submissions to be accepted for presentation in the future.
The programming committee, under the direction of Schwanda Flowers, took on the herculean task of sorting through a record number of 401 program submissions for only 68 slots. Many of the proposals not selected were referred to the sections and SIGs for programming needs in their sessions or for presentation at roundtables or as posters. At the same time, the committee has been taking additional steps to ensure that all programs meet the highest standards. Next year, look for the move away from 90-minute sessions and the use of 30- and 60-minute sessions to free up more time slots for programming.
Last year, in my address to the House of Delegates (HOD), I commented on how we were facing great challenges in attempting to right a health care system that continues to consume a greater percentage of our GNP without improving outcomes. This past year, we have witnessed numerous attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which has resulted once again in a greater number of our citizens without health care coverage. The opioid crisis and, most recently, the focus on excessively high prescription drug prices has placed our profession in the middle of these complex issues. Fortunately, many of our members and member institutions have stepped forward in an attempt to provide potential solutions to address these serious situations. An excellent example is the work on the opioid epidemic by our colleagues at Eastern Tennessee State University, who recently received the 2018 USPHS/IPEC Public Health Excellence in Interprofessional Education Collaboration Award in Washington, DC.
The health care environment which our graduates enter continues to present both challenges and opportunities. Although it was once said by someone who will remain nameless that fixing health care is easy, those of us who research or are involved in the day-to-day operations of our current delivery system, know that it is complex, wasteful, inequitable, and does not produce the expected outcomes based on the dollars that are spent.
I charged the Argus Commission, made up of the five most recent AACP presidents, (our version of the Jedi Council) to examine the National Academy of Medicine’s publication “Vital Directions for Health and Health Care” and to suggest the role that pharmacy and pharmacy education should play in addressing key issues identified in the report. The commission issued a series of recommendations. Of note is the need to place greater emphasis on our graduates’ abilities to use health informatics, data analytics, and quality measures. Additionally, they emphasized the importance of implementing value-based practice and payment models. Universal implementation of the PPCP throughout the educational programs and in all patient care settings was deemed essential to ensure a consistent model of care that would generate data and demonstrate the true value of pharmacists providing care to patients with complex medication-related problems. I have been greatly encouraged by the steps taken by the Joint COD-COF Task Force on the PPCP. It is essential for AACP to continue to lead this effort for as long as it takes to ensure it is THE model for pharmacists’ services both in the education and practice settings.
You may recall during my address to the HOD at last year’s meeting, I referred to Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle” and how leaders and organizations often spend most of their time and effort focusing on “what” we do and “how” we do it, but little time on reflecting about “why” we do what we do. He places the “why” in the center of his golden circle and stresses that once we answer the “why,” the “what” and “how” become much more focused and easier to deliver.
My goal during this past year was to challenge AACP, our standing committees, and its members to focus on the student as the most important person on our campuses and to see them as the “why” we do what we do. To that end, my communications to our members and my charges to our standing committees all have had a student-centered focus. I also appointed student members to many of the standing committees to ensure their voices were heard.
After two years of work, the Research and Graduate Affairs Committee, chaired by Sam Poloyac, completed its work addressing some of the barriers that students see to pursuing graduate education. To address their charges, the committee relied heavily on the framework of graduate education competencies (CAPE-like outcomes for graduate pharmacy education) that were developed during the first year of the committee’s work. These outcomes expanded the typical view of graduate education (knowledge and research) to include outcomes focusing on education, leadership and management, and personal and professional development. This broader set of outcomes should not only make pursuing a graduate degree more attractive to students but also better equip graduates to pursue and secure employment opportunities in a wider variety of health care fields. The committee concluded that there are a diverse set of barriers for many of our students, especially under-represented minorities, pursuing graduate education in pharmacy. They suggested that much might be gained from AACP-led efforts to establish collaborative initiatives among our colleagues and partners to develop competency-based pharmacy graduate education to make it more attractive and value-based to potential students.
Based upon my personal experience of working with engaged student pharmacists during my career, I charged the Strategic Engagement Committee, chaired by Gina Moore, to identify best practices within colleges of pharmacy in using the talents of their students to enhance the engagement activities both within and outside the colleges. Numerous examples tied very closely with strategic priorities 1, 2, and 3 were identified or suggested. The committee identified that linking student engagement to community engagement as our graduates enter practice is a greater challenge but suggested AACP might use its influence in JCPP to drive home the message that community service is important across the lifespan of a pharmacist’s work.
Speaking of engagement, during the past year, the Board of Directors has discussed the importance of our Association but also the greater pharmacy community in speaking out on the broader issues that negatively impact the health of our nation, such as poverty, mental illness, and gun violence. The time of sitting on the sidelines is over. The profession of pharmacy must stand up and show both our patients and the public that we care and realize that their road to health and wellness involves more than just medications. We hope to be able to join our IPEC partners and other professional health care organizations to better advocate for our citizens whose voices are not routinely heard.
Strategic priority #3 focuses on Innovations in Education and Practice. The Academic Affairs Committee, chaired by Michael Fulford, was charged to examine cultures of teaching and learning in our colleges and what might be necessary to align teaching strategies with tomorrow’s learners. In addition, the committee examined the issue of lifelong learning.
The committee’s work resulted in recommendations focusing on the following: the need for universal recognition of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) as valuable and scholarly work at all of our colleges, recognition of the time and effort necessary to implement, refine, and maintain new pedagogical approaches, the need for grant funding to support educational innovation, and that any discussion of lifelong learning must involve faculty, students, and practitioners. The committee’s work aligned nicely with aspects of strategic priority #3. As an example, this year, AACP initiated the first call for SoTL grants. More than 100 letters of interest and 90 final submissions were received. These ranged across all disciplines and across all types of schools and colleges with most submissions having direct applicability to strategic priority #3. The Academic Affairs Committee members, COF leaders and staff reviewed these submissions. Ten grants of $4,000 were awarded in June. I want to publicly thank the AFPE, and AFPE President Ellen Woods specifically, for their $10,000 contribution that allowed us to increase the number of grants in this cycle. We are very excited about this new opportunity to stimulate educational research in our Academy.
Historically, advances in teaching and learning have focused on the didactic rather than the experiential portions of the curriculum. Since at least one-third of our students’ education occurs outside the walls of our colleges, we must ensure that our preceptors have the skills and abilities to teach our students about CAPE, the PPCP, and the EPAs. Based on their charge, our Professional Affairs Committee, chaired by Susan Vos, developed a self-reflection/self-assessment tool for pharmacy faculty and preceptors to allow them to assess their capability and confidence to teach and assess CAPE outcomes, the PPCP, and EPAs.
The tool was pilot tested, and the committee recommends expanding it across the Academy to identify needed content for continuing professional development (CPD) programs for both pharmacy faculty and preceptors. These CPD efforts could be developed jointly and used across the Academy to allow for enhanced and more consistent learning environments for our students during their experiential education. Indeed, as the first “down payment,” AACP is activating an ambitious preceptor engagement program. You’ll learn more about it during this meeting.
Last year, I asked members from all our institutions to take the necessary steps to ensure the success and well-being of our students not only in the classroom or practice site but in their careers and personal lives as well. The Student Affairs Committee, chaired by Monica Miller, took on this very important charge of increasing student resilience and well-being and developed a robust list of recommendations that I have pledged I will continue to champion. Unfortunately, during the 6-month period of time the committee examined this issue, two member schools represented on this committee, including my own, lost a student pharmacist to death by suicide. I imagine if this statistic was a part of one of the annual AACP surveys, we would be shocked at the total number. Regardless, I think you would agree that even one is too many.
Three key outcomes of the committee’s work surfaced from the report. First, the broader student voice must play a larger role in addressing this issue. We cannot just sample from our student leaders and high achievers. Second, targeted strategies to address these well-being issues, moving forward, must involve more than just counselors and advisors. All administrators, faculty, staff, and preceptors play a vital role. Third, the issues of resiliency, wellness, and burnout apply to our faculty and preceptors as well. Much work needs to be done now and over time by AACP and our colleges. This issue is directly related to strategic priorities 1, 2 and 3. Potential students will not be attracted to careers that adversely impact their sense of well-being, and our students and faculty cannot work together to ensure learning if their physical and mental health are at risk. I am happy to say that the Fall AACP Institute will focus on well-being and mindfulness among our students and faculty to facilitate a shift in the culture of pharmacy education. In addition, AACP will petition to join the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaboration on Clinician Well-being upon our return from the Annual Meeting.
As you can hopefully sense, I am very passionate about the issue of student well-being. It will be important for caring faculty to speak out to ensure this issue receives continued attention in the foreseeable future. I am reminded of a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King: “Our lives begin to end, the day when we become silent about things that matters most.”
When I look back over the past year, I am quite proud of all that the Association has been able to accomplish. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of our volunteer members and staff. Our efforts, including the move of our headquarters to 1400 Crystal Drive, are the result of strict alignment with the strategic plan adopted by the HOD two years ago. The intent, when the plan was drafted by the BOD, was to make it ambitious, visionary, and flexible. To date, I can say we have fulfilled that goal.
The recommendations coming from this year’s committees will be slotted into one of the eight strategic priorities to ensure they bear fruit. Many challenges remain before us as an Academy but I am confident under the future leadership of President-elect David Allen and President-elect designate Todd Sorensen, and the support and effort from you, our volunteer members, our Academy will thrive and address these challenges with innovation and persistence.
A couple of months ago, I shared with the Academy that, as a student-focused educator, commencement and other activities associated with honoring our graduates was my most wonderful time of the year. Even the olive green velvet trim on the commencement robes looks a little less drab and takes on a special significance. Extending congratulations and thanking the graduates for the contributions they have made to my personal life is always a special but emotional time for me.
I would have to say that attending the AACP Annual Meeting is my second most wonderful time of the year. Meeting and catching up with colleagues, honoring our peers, and being enlightened with new knowledge and innovations in education. Wow! It kind of feels like I should lead you in song, pour some eggnog, or perhaps even put on our ugly pharmacy sweaters!
I hope you feel the same way as I do over the next four days. This is my 30th Annual Meeting and I can say with confidence that I always leave each meeting feeling recharged. I have one final request of you during my presidential year. That request is for each of you to reach out and introduce yourself to someone you don’t know and share your experiences. If you do not have experience, ask for advice. Better yet, offer to buy them a cup of eggnog.
Thank you for your attention and best wishes for a productive Annual Meeting.