ASHP has played a key role in supporting our members and the entire healthcare community throughout the pandemic. From the early days of spring 2020, when we focused on knowledge-sharing and advocating for access to needed drugs and equipment, to today, as we support continued mass vaccination efforts, ASHP’s commitment has never wavered.
Hello, I’m Tom Johnson, ASHP president. I am pleased to present a joint address from the President and the CEO to the House of Delegates. On behalf of CEO Paul Abramowitz, I thank you for joining me today.
“Unprecedented,” “extraordinary,” and “remarkable” are words used frequently to describe the historic nature of the past 18 months and the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic. But we think you will agree that they are also words that describe the pharmacists, residents, student pharmacists, and technicians who have stepped up to meet the challenges of these times, doing amazing work on the front lines and behind the scenes to ensure the very best care for patients.
Reflection on the pandemic will always start with remembrance and acknowledging its societal and economic impact. The lives lost. But it must also focus on the tremendous response of the scientific community and healthcare professionals who worked tirelessly to get us to where we are today. With multiple vaccines now available and Americans aged 12 or older eligible for vaccination, the light at the end of the tunnel continues to grow brighter.
ASHP has played a key role in supporting our members and the entire healthcare community throughout the pandemic. From the early days of spring 2020, when we focused on knowledge-sharing and advocating for access to needed drugs and equipment, to today, as we support continued mass vaccination efforts, ASHP’s commitment has never wavered.
In the spring and summer of 2020, ASHP made many important resources available to all pharmacy professionals and the healthcare community free of charge to ensure that essential tools were available to all who needed them. The value of these resources exceeded $60 million.
Knowledge and information sharing have remained focal points, and ASHP has developed and disseminated an incredible number of COVID-19 resources.
In a 12-month span, we produced 81 podcast episodes, which were downloaded over 81,000 times, and hosted 53 webinars with over 24,000 attendees. We published and consistently updated critical tools like the evidence table for COVID-19-related treatments, which has been downloaded more than 57,000 times. And we built on our position as a go-to organization for our medication-use expertise, appearing in nearly 4,000 COVID-19 related articles that generated over 7 billion media impressions.
More recently, we supported broader authorizations for pharmacy staff to order and administer COVID-19 tests and vaccines; advocated for reimbursement for vaccine administration; and produced public-facing messaging to build vaccine confidence among the general public. For example, a number of ASHP members were featured in a nationwide communications initiative to educate the American public and build vaccine confidence. The COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative, supported by the Ad Council and the COVID-19 Collaborative, featured ASHP members who recorded videos of themselves explaining a number of vaccine topics, including herd immunity, vaccine research, and how vaccines work.
We also joined the Made to Save coalition as a founding partner to support a month-long vaccination campaign and collaborated with the Department of Health and Human Services and the We Can Do This campaign to advance credible information from pharmacists. Collaborations and partnerships will be a critical driver in efforts to get all eligible Americans vaccinated and end the pandemic.
In April, Paul Abramowitz was named as a co-chair of an important national task force convened by GTMRx, the Get The Medications Right Institute. The “building vaccine confidence in the medical neighborhood” task force is a significant inter-professional effort designed to build partnerships among trusted healthcare providers, public health leaders, consumer health advocates, and community and social media influencers. The task force members include leaders from across healthcare, academia, government, and industry who are united in the end goal to leverage the collective influence of these groups to increase vaccination rates and help the United States achieve broad immunity against COVID-19.
Throughout the past year, we always kept the wide-ranging needs of our members in mind, creating and launching a wide range of strategic initiatives, products, and services to meet those needs.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
In June 2020, ASHP created the Task Force on Racial Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to advise ASHP on actionable steps to further address and take inventory of matters of racial diversity, equity, and inclusion as they relate to issues facing Black Americans.
In January, the task force submitted 30 recommendations to the Board of Directors. The recommendations provide specific guidance to ASHP in several key areas, including ASHP governance and committees; education, training, research, and publications; and advocacy, marketing, and communications.1 Further, the task force broadened its charge to focus on important efforts ASHP can undertake to support all persons who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color.
Immediate early steps taken by ASHP addressed recommendations related to ASHP governance and committees. Swift action was taken to update our nominations process for board and committee members, and we are pleased to note that these changes resulted in the most diverse slate of candidates for board, officer, and section leadership positions in ASHP history.
In addition to these initial steps, ASHP has established work groups to support the implementation of each task force recommendation. We will regularly share updates with you on our progress.
Our organization has long been a leader in national efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare and advancing public health and social justice. Our work in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion at every level within our organization and our profession will always remain a focal point of everything we do.
Advocacy
The past year has also been an extremely busy and productive one for ASHP’s government relations team as we work to advance the interests of our members, our profession, and our patients. Paul Abramowitz and government affairs staff have had several recent meetings with White House staff members and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials across a range of issues, including the need for Medicare and Medicaid payment mechanisms to support pharmacist care; expansion of the role of pharmacists in COVID-19 and flu testing and treatment; opioid stewardship and the need to remove barriers to pharmacist provision of medications for opioid use disorder; and opportunities for pharmacists to address disparities in access to care.
ASHP has been at the forefront of the fight to protect the 340B Drug Pricing Program, which is critical to ensuring that our most vulnerable populations have access to lifesaving medications and the care they need. ASHP’s sustained efforts, in collaboration with our partners, including 340B Health, the American Hospital Association, America’s Essential Hospitals, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and others resulted in the announcement from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which manages the 340B program, that it has directed 6 drug manufacturers to comply with 340B pricing requirements or risk financial penalties.2
In support of HRSA’s decision, lawyers for ASHP and our partner organizations presented oral arguments in a court case between AstraZeneca and HHS. This is another step in our ongoing work to aggressively protect this important program.
ASHP has also taken extensive action to address the issue of payer-mandated white bagging. In addition to directly lobbying the federal government to act, we are engaged with health systems, peer organizations, and state affiliates and are working on a number of resources for members, including roundtable discussions with health-system pharmacy leaders, a self-assessment checklist tool, webinars, and podcasts on identifying solutions to minimize the impact of white bagging and supporting state advocacy efforts through engagement with our state affiliates. We also cosigned a letter to the Food and Drug Administration along with more than 50 health systems outlining our concerns that white bagging threatens patient safety.
Most recently, ASHP has continued to lead the charge to support expanded access to pharmacist care at both the state and national levels. In late April, bipartisan provider legislation was introduced in both the House and the Senate that would remove barriers preventing Medicare beneficiaries from accessing healthcare services from their pharmacist. The Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act (S 1362, HR 2759)3 recognizes pharmacists as valuable members of the healthcare team and the integral role we can play in addressing the longstanding disparities faced by patients in medically underserved communities. Over 150 healthcare organizations, including every ASHP state affiliate, has joined ASHP in supporting the legislation.
In addition, HHS recently took an important step in recognizing pharmacists as patient care providers. Reflecting ASHP’s recommendation to the White House COVID-19 testing team to create a payment mechanism for pharmacist services authorized under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act,4 HHS announced that pharmacists will qualify for reimbursement to cover provider costs for testing uninsured patients for COVID-19.
As the collective voice of pharmacists who serve in all healthcare settings spanning the full spectrum of medication use, ASHP remains committed to fighting for laws and policies that ensure the advancement of practice and the best possible outcomes for our patients.
Meetings
Shifting gears a bit, we want to take a moment to reflect on the notable success of the first-ever virtual Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition. The meeting’s theme was “unstoppable,” which perfectly encapsulates the spirit of ASHP, our members, and our interprofessional community.
The largest annual gathering of pharmacists in the world, the Midyear is always highly anticipated. The move to an all-virtual event was daunting, but ASHP staff and volunteers delivered a record-setting event with more than 27,000 attendees that featured exciting speakers, over 1,000 residency showcase booths, more than 4,000 posters, and our hallmark world-class educational programming.
Innovation
Pivoting to create and implement a highly successful virtual Midyear meeting is just one example of ASHP’s commitment to innovation, which was a focal point of the past year, including successful efforts to extend the reach and impact of the ASHP Innovation Center. Highlights include partnership with the American Medical Association on a joint Pharmacogenomics Virtual Summit series promoting best practices for the clinical application of pharmacogenomics. Nearly 4,000 registrants, including pharmacist and physician leaders, attended the series.
In addition, the center partnered with the ASHP Foundation to award the competitive “optimizing technology solutions” innovation grant to 2 member recipients in July 2020 and secured funding to offer the grant for a second consecutive year.
And ASHP is also preparing to open applications for our newest program that will recognize high-performing hospital and health-system pharmacy departments for excellence in medication-use safety and pharmacy practice. The awarded certification will be based on a new ASHP standard developed from highly regarded, contemporary best practices. Pharmacy departments that have achieved excellence under this standard may apply for and undergo a formal process to be considered for designation as an ASHP-certified Center of Excellence.
Growing strength of ASHP
Finally, we want to highlight ASHP’s ongoing membership growth, fueled by our commitment to support the evolving pharmacy profession through the expansion of products, programs, and services. Over the past year, we launched the Section of Pharmacy Educators and the Section of Community Pharmacy Practitioners, two important new sections that provide enhanced engagement opportunities and resources for members.
In addition, the exciting work of ASHP’s Pharmacy Executive Leadership Alliance, or PELA as we like to call it, kicked into high gear. Formed in early 2020, this group has provided extensive knowledge sharing over the past year and published an important white paper in February to advance COVID-19 response and recovery. Last month, PELA hosted an executive summit on telehealth, and we look forward to sharing the report from that successful event with our members in the coming months.
In what has certainly been a challenging year, ASHP has also continued to support the well-being and resilience of our members, including free access to Headspace (Headspace, Inc., Santa Monica, CA) and other valuable resources. ASHP’s value and relevance to the profession has never been more evident. Total membership increased by 8% in 2020, including 4% growth in practitioner members, 7% growth in new practitioner members, and a nearly 20% increase in student membership. As of December 31, 2020, we stood at 58,000 total members. Our highest total ever. We are proud to say that ASHP is thriving!
Final thoughts
It’s clear that what we have achieved together this past year is truly unprecedented, extraordinary, and remarkable. And none of our achievements would have been possible without the strategic brilliance and passion of Joe Oddis.
Dr. Oddis, ASHP’s longest-tenured CEO, passed away in February at the age of 92. His accomplishments and impact on global pharmacy practice are far too extensive to list here. But his legacy cannot be understated, and our ongoing success is directly attributable to his innovative spirit and vision. He will be forever remembered and greatly missed.
In closing, thank you to all of you for your professionalism, dedication, and for all you do for our profession and our patients.
Disclosures
The authors have declared no potential conflicts of interest.
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