We are in extraordinary times, and during such periods, strong leadership is essential. Our organization is fortunate for the leadership of Immediate Past-president Jimmi Hatton Kolpek, the committed Board of Regents, and the truly dedicated ACCP staff, all of whom have provided necessary guidance for the College during these challenging times. I begin my presidential year with heartfelt gratitude for the steadfast leadership demonstrated by colleagues throughout ACCP.

ACCP has always been a significant part of my professional life, and I am honored and privileged to serve as your president over the coming year. I have had many mentors in this organization, and because of the leadership they have modeled, I now have this opportunity to serve, for which I am incredibly grateful. I appreciate the trust you have placed in me and look forward to working with you to lead our organization.

The past 20 months of the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged each of us, both professionally and personally. On the personal front, many of us have discovered new interests or hobbies. For me, this has been baking cakes. As with most new experiences, I have learned a great deal while baking. For example, I have learned that good ingredients, precision, patience, and a strong foundation (i.e., cake pan) are essential – and that failures are inevitable. Many of these lessons can be applied to other areas of life as well and even to the work we have before us within ACCP.

I have thus applied these lessons in developing the presidential theme for this coming year: “Advocacy to Advance Our Profession: A Piece of Cake!” Specifically, I am using my experiences in BAKING to highlight their similarities and applications to our ACCP work overall and to the activities specifically needed to advance our advocacy platform.

• Begin with a Vision and a Recipe to Get There
• Assure Different Ingredients Are Included and Valued
• Keep the Focus on Progress and Adjust as Necessary
• Incorporate Patience and Time to Assess and Prepare for the Next Steps
• Never Forget the Icing
• Go Forth and Share with Others

Begin with a vision of the future and a recipe to get there. In baking, it is important to find out the recipient’s favorite type of cake, flavor, and icing and to envision the flavor and appearance of the final cake. Having that vision for the outcome – even in the early stages – and finding the right recipe to get the desired flavor are important. For ACCP, the 2020 Strategic Plan articulates a vision for our profession and our organization. It also outlines the recipe – the way we will achieve the desired endpoints. The plan is built on the College’s core values and mission and identifies specific strategic priorities to develop, advance, and position clinical pharmacists for a successful future. This plan will continue to guide the leadership, staff, and members in the College’s future decisions and activities.

Assure different ingredients are included and valued. In baking, you need many good-quality ingredients. Each has a distinct flavor, but the true value is when they are mixed together in the proper proportions – that’s when creativity and innovation truly occur. This aligns with ACCP’s commitment to embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Over the past year under the leadership of Dr. Hatton Kolpek, whose presidential theme was “Creating a Culture of Belonging,” the Board of Regents participated in DEI professional development education and training. During the 2021 ACCP Virtual Annual Meeting, Dr. Mona Ameli provided an inspirational keynote presentation, “From Diversity to Inclusion: Creating an Inclusive Organization,” and additional Annual Meeting programming offered insights from ACCP’s internal DEI assessment.

This coming year, we will build on this important work as we implement the College’s Strategic DEI Plan. We have impaneled a DEI Task Force to help guide this implementation by providing input to the Board of Regents on the DEI plan’s goals and activities, communications, and vision for engagement. We have also formed an ad hoc Community Pharmacy Advisory Panel made up of leaders in community pharmacy and ACCP staff through which the new ACCP Community-Based Practice and Research Network (PRN) was formed. We will continue our work this coming year to raise awareness of and support for clinical pharmacy in community-based settings. All of this work to date – the DEI plan and the two new PRNs (the second being the Health Equity PRN, launched earlier this year) as well as the emphasis we will place DEI during the coming year through committee and task force activities – is evidence that ACCP and each of us as members are on a collective journey to becoming inclusive leaders, embracing diversity, and building health equity.

Keep the focus on progress and adjust as necessary. Of utmost importance when baking, watch the cake and don’t let it burn. Monitor it, adjust the rack if necessary, and remove it from the oven to cool at the appropriate time. This diligence to watch, learn, and adjust is also how our organization operates. ACCP has worked over the years to identify its “hedgehog,” defined in Jim Collins’ Good to Great as an organization’s core values, because this concept identifies the convergence of (1) what we are best at, (2) what we are passionate about, and (3) what drives our resource engine. This hedgehog has informed our strategic plan, DEI plan, and advocacy platform and remains central to the work of our committees, task forces, and advocacy efforts.

This was a record year in the number of members who volunteered for ACCP committee or task force service, and in the coming year, more members than ever will engage in this work, including students, residents, and fellows. Thank you for your willingness to contribute and give of your time. Over the next year, ACCP standing committees will continue their work to identify ACCP members for recognition through awards, credentials, and nominations; complete plans for programming at the upcoming 2022 Global Conference on Clinical Pharmacy; review research fellowship training programs; and focus on needs specific to students and residents. We also have committees addressing particular issues of importance, such as rewards and advances for clinical pharmacists, collaborations between community- and clinic-based pharmacists, ACPE Accreditation Standards for the upcoming revision, and learning outcomes of simulation modalities. The Member Relations Committee will develop recommendations to address barriers to clinical pharmacy careers among underrepresented populations. The Publications Committee will produce an updated white paper on residency training program equivalency. Finally, the Research Affairs Committee will develop a commentary on opportunities for clinical pharmacists in health disparities research.

In addition to the DEI Task Force, three other task forces were formed this past year: the Task Force on Career Transitions to develop a report on professional development programs to assist with these transitions; the Task Force on Residency Training to provide a commentary on new, innovative ideas to increase the number of residency training positions; and the Task Force on Treatment Guidelines, which is charged with developing a white paper examining the application of clinical treatment guidelines to real-world practice.

As we focus on advocacy during the coming year, I encourage you to review ACCP’s advocacy platform for advancing clinical practice and expanding pharmacists’ opportunities to provide patient care. Our No. 1 priority remains payment and coverage for clinical pharmacists’ services through Medicare, commercial payers, state Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, and other organizations. We are also focused on advancing medication optimization in priority areas, such as the COVID-19 pandemic response, opioid/substance abuse, drug pricing policy, and pharmacogenomics/precision medicine. Our advocacy team meets regularly with other pharmacy and health care stakeholder organizations to collaborate on numerous initiatives. It is important that we continue to assess this environment, explore opportunities to advance initiatives, adjust our platform as necessary, and communicate advocacy engagement opportunities with members.

Incorporate patience and time to assess and prepare for the next steps. When baking cakes, you must allow time to cool and prepare the necessary foundation to support the finished product. ACCP has taken the time to analyze and understand relevant policy issues and develop processes and approaches to secure public, legislative, and regulatory support. With a focus on medication optimization and team-based comprehensive medication management, the College continues to engage with physician organizations and collaborate with multi-stakeholder groups such as the Primary Care Collaborative (PCC), where we serve as a PCC Executive Committee member organization; and the Get the Medications Right (GTMRx) Institute, where we participate in workgroups on practice and care delivery transformation and payment/policy solutions. This work has helped prepare us to move forward and take advantage of opportunities to advance clinical pharmacy practice.

Never forget the icing. After baking, a cake is considered incomplete without an attractive frosting. The message we convey must be attractive, personalized, and relatable. An important component of advocacy is expressing policy issues in clear language. Our ACCP professional affairs and advocacy teams do an excellent job of outlining our priorities and communicating them effectively. We will do our part to clarify and embellish this message – placing the icing on the cake.

Finally, Go forth and share with others. Having baked the cake, it is important to share it with the intended recipient(s)! ACCP has done an extraordinary job of planning, preparing, and positioning, and we must now go forth and share these accomplishments with others, helping to advance our profession through advocacy. This will require a collective, team approach, and our organization’s leadership, staff, and members at every level can play a pivotal role in this effort. We will continue to work this coming year within ACCP to increase awareness of the importance of advocacy and provide opportunities to engage in external work with collaborative partners and decision-makers in legislative and regulatory environments that will advance our initiatives.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve the College. I am grateful and excited for the opportunities that lie before us. I challenge you to identify ways this coming year to advocate for clinical pharmacy – either by serving at a local level in your practice setting or by joining ACCP’s national initiatives to advance our profession. We will continue to engage in dialogue and enhanced communications on advocacy opportunities – together, it will be a piece of cake!