The Institute of Medicine (IOM) is an independent, nonprofit organization that serves as adviser to the nation to improve health. By making recommendations from consensus reports and facilitating other activities, the IOM fosters discussion, discovery, and cross-disciplinary thinking across a broad group of national and international health care stakeholders. Although many of the activities undertaken by the IOM are requested by government agencies, the IOM receives no direct federal funding for its work. In addition, the IOM is both an honorific and a research organization, with more than 1900 members and foreign associates donating their time and expertise to its work and mission.

In 2012, ACCP—together with the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP)—co-funded the IOM Anniversary Fellowship in Pharmacy. Upon installation as the inaugural Pharmacy Fellow in October 2012, I embarked on an intriguing journey of discovery to learn more about ongoing IOM activities as well as opportunities for clinical pharmacists to make an impact. The IOM is led by the Executive Office and IOM Council, which oversee the work of nine separate IOM boards (i.e., Population Health and Public Health Practice; Health Sciences Policy; Health Care Services; Global Health; Food and Nutrition; Children, Youth, and Families; African Science Academy Development; Health of Select Populations; and Health Policy Educational Programs and Fellowships). Beneath the umbrella of each board, many ad hoc and ongoing activities exist—including forums, roundtables, and standing committees. These activities offer a neutral venue to convene leaders in government and industry, scientists and other academic experts, clinicians, public interest group stakeholders, and consumers to share insight and perspective on complex and diverse health-related topics.

The IOM Anniversary Fellowship requires attachment to at least two activities during the 2 years while maintaining one’s primary clinical or academic position. Consensus committees—which plan, develop, and implement consensus studies—are considered “gold standard” IOM activities because of their rigorous process to construct and promulgate evidence-based reports. In contrast, forums, roundtables, and standing committees often assemble leading experts and stakeholders for workshops and meetings designed to address certain issues or perspectives, without the ability to publish findings or specific recommendations. After meeting with leaders of the IOM boards, I seized the opportunity to attach to the Roundtable for Translating Genomics-Based Research for Health (under the Board on Health Sciences Policy) and to the Consensus Committee for Developing High-Priority Metrics (under the Board on Health Care Services and the Roundtable for Value- and Science-Driven Healthcare).

The Roundtable on Translating Genomics-Based Research for Health is directed by Adam Berger, Ph.D. (IOM), and is presently cochaired by Geoffrey Ginsburg, M.D., Ph.D. (Duke), and Sharon Terry, M.S. (Genetic Alliance). This roundtable sponsors several workshops throughout the year, and I’ve attended three of the past four. In addition to attending the workshops and roundtable meetings, I am involved with a roundtable workgroup (Education, Engagement, and Cultural Change) as well as with writing projects (written workshop summaries, white paper development). One current workgroup focus is surveying leading stakeholders of different health care organizations in order to incorporate cultural elements vital to the clinical implementation of genomic medicine programs.

The Roundtable for Value- and Science-Driven Healthcare is directed by J. Michael McGinnis, M.D., M.A., MPP (IOM), and chaired by Mark McClellan, M.D., Ph.D. (Brookings). Recently, the roundtable received approval to convene a consensus committee to study core quality metrics across the U.S. health care system and provide recommendations about which metrics should be high priority. Once the focus and budget are finalized, the committee works independently to reach a consensus. In fact, although committees may gather information from many sources in public meetings, they carry out their deliberations in private to avoid any external influence. Typically, consensus studies such as this one are funded for 1 year, with publication of a consensus report upon completion. Noteworthy consensus reports published previously include “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” in 1999 and “Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America” in 2012, among countless others.

The IOM Anniversary Fellowship in Pharmacy affords tremendous opportunity to significantly affect the work of the IOM and advance the discipline of clinical pharmacy—which is increasingly important in this era of health care reform. Please consider this a professional call to action for ACCP members to learn how to engage in IOM activities and cultivate influence among national leaders in health care.