It’s National Volunteer Week, a time to recognize those who spend time supporting causes they care about. The College is fortunate to have so many who serve ACAAI by volunteering their time and sharing their expertise to further its mission. I’m deeply appreciative of our members’ commitment to serve, and I’d like to shine a light on some of their efforts:
- The Annual Meeting Program Committee – going above and beyond to make the Annual Scientific Meeting’s educational sessions top of the line and relevant to practicing allergists.
- Archives Committee – planning for the College’s 80th anniversary this year by developing an Annals article on ACAAI history, covering the years 2012 -2022. The committee also is working to digitize important assets in the College’s historical archives.
- Fellows-in-Training Committee – to support physicians who are just beginning their careers in A/I, the committee has been developing study questions for the Board Review Corner. Also, some members have been working with the Practice Management Committee on a toolkit geared toward FITs and New Allergists.
- New Allergists Committee – this group just launched a new digital newsletter for early-career allergists to provide them with resources especially pertinent to those early in their practices.
- Program Directors Committee – the committee opened up applications for the 2022 SPARK program and has implemented a new pilot program for eight new SPARK scholarships for medical students at the four historically Black medical schools. They are also overseeing several large projects including AIM 2022, the Board Review Corner and the Patch Test Training grant program.
- The committees within the Scientific Council have been busy on a number of projects, including:
- Updating information on new biologics in the College’s online resources. The Asthma, Biologics & Pharmacology, and Dermatology Committees have been major contributors to these resources.
- Providing suggestions for topics and speakers for the 2022 Annual Meeting.
- Reviewing educational content in the College Learning Connection (CLC).
- Providing mentorship to Fellows-in-Training in the development of new questions for the FIT Board Review Corner.
- Developing surveys to gain insights on member clinical experience on a variety of topics and disease states. Some recent survey topics included patch testing and sleep disorders.
- Working on manuscripts for publication in Annals. Recent topics include integrative medicine, sleep disorders, and inflight epinephrine use during allergy-related emergencies.
The above is by no means a comprehensive list of the work volunteers have been doing. More than 300 members volunteer their time to serve on our committees and councils each year, and another 70 or so serve on editorial boards and task forces. I appreciate all of your efforts to fit the College in to your busy professional and personal lives.
Our volunteers help the College run seamlessly. I thank each one of you – during National Volunteer Week and beyond – for your commitment to the College, the A/I specialty, and our patients’ lives.
