Tackling our taboo topics.

We have successfully sailed through a great deal of programming this week aimed at making academic pharmacy healthy and strong. I hope that you personally found the sessions stimulating and that your networking with colleagues old and new offered you additional insights and ideas that tops any formal programming even the best program planners could provide. Each delegate has received copies of the report of the Board of Directors on your Association's priorities and the evolution of our programs and services in this past year. More detailed information is available in the Governance section of the AACP Web site for those interested in every little and not so little activity of the 2005-06 association year. This is my fifth opportunity to address the delegates in my role as your Executive Vice President. It is a pleasure to work for a group whose leaders constantly have their ears to the ground to identify the issues that most challenge academic pharmacy and our profession. I hope that you have gained the appreciation by listening to the reports from Diane and Marilyn that your elected leaders are committed to the design and delivery of programs that effectively address your greatest needs. Your association is fiscally healthy and is staffed by a group of really talented individuals – some of whom have worked for AACP for almost 25 years and others whose tenure is only days or weeks long! This blend of historical perspective and fresh insights mirrors the characteristics of our nation's soon-to-be 100 colleges of pharmacy as well. We've grown the AACP staff modestly over the past several years keeping pace with the institutional membership growth we've experienced. I am especially pleased with our ability to add staff resources in academic affairs and assessment just in the last 2 months and know that our new capacity there will be immediately put to good use serving faculty, administrators, and academic program staff in key areas. Recognizing that my remarks stand between you, the completion of our business this morning and your departure home or on some well-deserved vacation, I'll be brief. I've titled my remarks, “Tackling Our Taboo Topics” which is a term that Marilyn Speedie and I picked up last fall when she and I participated in a program for association leaders sponsored by the American Society of Association Executives. The final session focused on the characteristics of healthy organizations and we were both struck by the comment that healthy organizations are able to discuss difficult issues, laying those taboo topics right on the table to be dealt with rather than buried, ignored or only whispered in hallways. In April we tested AACP's ability to tackle our taboo topics by placing several on the agenda for our board retreat. Ever the overachievers, we identified more than we could really hope to address in the few hours we had for this portion of our agenda, but our experience was marvelous! It was invigorating to spend an hour talking about issues like: Are our graduates prepared to deliver pharmaceutical care and are the practices they enter even considering allowing them to offer patient-centered care to those they serve? Will there be sufficient faculty in the future to advance our teaching, research and service missions and are faculty really equipped to be competent scholars and good teachers? When is the appropriate timing for new programs to affiliate as institutional members of AACP, before or after ACPE affixes a stamp of quality on their plans to establish a new school? Easy subjects, don't you agree?! Of course not, they are a few of our taboo topics! This led me to think about what topics I might tee up for discussion with you, our delegates who are important conduits between the Association and our member institutions. I've selected just three to highlight this morning as they reflect important priorities for the academy. Before I begin I have to tell a story on myself. As I told the attendees at yesterday's intimate dialogue with pharmacy education leaders, my long term career aspiration is to be a diplomat! Those of you who know Senior Vice President Ken Miller have no doubt appreciated his direct, devil's advocate style of approaching issues! Ken reviewed and commented on my initial draft of these remarks and challenged that I really hadn't put the taboo topics on the table and had approached my subjects with too much diplomacy! Diane and Marilyn agreed so I've reworked the text to get right to the issues we must confront.