It has been an incredible journey.
From the President
Dr. Hruza served as Academy president from March 2019 to March 2020.
By George Hruza, MD, MBA, March 1, 2020
It boggles the mind how quickly 12 months can pass. As I sit here thinking back on the past year serving as your Academy president, so many of our endeavors and successes are flashing through my head. My hope with this, my final, Dermatology World column is to remind us of all our specialty’s accomplishments this year.
First, I would like to start by praising all of you for your dedication to the specialty and our patients. This year, many of you supported the Academy’s patient and public outreach programs with your time and/or money, such as Camp Discovery, the SPOT me® Skin Cancer Screening Program, and Adopt-a-Shade. Some of you made an impact on your specialty by participating in the Academy’s Leadership Institute initiative that provides training, mentoring, and networking opportunities to help dermatologists develop leadership skills. Many of you spent countless hours helping us develop care guidelines via Academy committees and task forces.
Your Academy Board of Directors has also had a busy year. This year your Board approved a position statement on sexual and gender minority health in dermatology, a member conduct policy to ensure a professional and collegial environment for Academy/Association meetings and other activities, and a position statement on augmented intelligence. See the new position statements.
To improve transparency, we have also significantly revised and expanded our disclosure of interest policy. Access the Academy’s conflicts of interest disclosure form and learn more about how to manage outside interests that are potential conflicts.
This year, we also launched a new strategic plan, where we set a simple but lofty vision for the Academy: Recognized as the leading authority for the highest quality of compassionate dermatologic care. In striving for this vision, the plan sets goals for the next five years that will focus on excellence in dermatologic care through education and advocacy, access to dermatologic care, data-driven transformation of care, unity of the specialty, and support for board-certified dermatologists leading care teams. Read more about the plan.
I mentioned last year in Washington, D.C., that the AAD needs to be more nimble and proactive. With that in mind, under the leadership of Henry Lim, MD, we are in the middle of reviewing all of our 200+ programs and activities to make sure that they align with our mission, vision, and overall strategic plan. Once complete by mid-2020, I hope that the Academy will truly operate more like a speedboat than a supertanker with our resources targeted to our high-priority areas.
We also set the wheels in motion to launch the all-new AAD Innovation Academy in Seattle this August. The focus of this Academy meeting is innovation: Attendees will get the latest clinical information, learn about new practice trends and techniques, and discover emerging products. Registration opens soon — keep an eye on Dermatology World and the Academy's Innovation Academy for more information!
Some of you were heavily involved in advocacy, whether it was participating in advocacy days in your state houses, the Capitol Hill Skin Cancer Screening, the AADA Legislative Conference, the Diversity Champion Workshop, the Capitol Hill Impact of Dermatology in Minority Communities briefing, or simply sending a letter or email to your elected officials about an issue important to our patients. Please know that your actions make a difference, not only to your colleagues in the specialty but the patients we serve as well. Your Washington, D.C. staff and our members have had major successes on the regulatory front with CMS. We are also making progress at the Capitol and in many states on prior authorization, step therapy, scope of practice, drug pricing, truth in advertising, in-office compounding, and regulatory burden relief, among others.
The Academy has a large and growing international membership, with many international members attending our annual and summer meetings. We continue to expand our outreach to our colleagues across the world. This past year we participated in educational sessions at the World Congress in Milan, as well as the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology meeting in Spain and meetings in China, Egypt, India, the United Arab Emirates, and others. Everywhere I traveled, I was humbled by the high regard for the AAD across the world.
I want to give a special thank you to our Interim Executive Director, Irv Bomberger, who helped us admirably move our agenda forward in 2019. After a careful search, we identified Elizabeth Usher, MBA, as our new Executive Director. Since starting a couple of months ago, she hit the ground running and I know will be a great asset for the Academy for years to come.
That’s a lot to pack in one year, and what I mention above only scratches the surface! Thank you for joining me on this incredible journey. I am honored and humbled to have led this great organization. We have accomplished so much to be proud of and I know that the future holds great things for our Academy, especially with Bruce H. Thiers, MD, at the helm. With his leadership and your continued enthusiasm, I know we can achieve more for our specialty and our patients.
