Vision Forward, the College’s current strategic plan, has given us an effective roadmap to further advance our mission, elevate our profile and offerings, engage members and educate the public about the specialty of allergy and immunology.
As we enter the third year of Vision Forward, we are focusing on the following key areas:
- Raise awareness about the importance of specialized, allergist care among PCPs.
- Continue to elevate the Advocacy Council’s brand/visual identity and “wins” for the specialty.
- Expand practice management and educational resources.
- Develop an initiative to build stronger connections between academic and community practice.
- Increase diversity within the organization and the profession.
- Continue to address and reduce health disparities.
Perhaps one of the most exciting initiatives we are continuing in 2023 is our “Time for an Allergist” marketing campaign to inform PCPs about the benefits of referring patients to a board-certified allergist. The campaign website explains to PCPs (and the public) the importance of using board-certified allergists and encourages them to use the Find an Allergist tool to locate an allergist in their area. In addition to our short videos (with Hollywood celebrity John C. McGinley), we provide a variety of marketing tools for allergy practices to use in our “Time for an Allergist” Toolkit. It contains email templates that members can use to market their practices to PCPs and patients, as well as printable content, post cards and web posts.
After just four months of launching the “Time for an Allergist” campaign (September – December), our videos had been viewed more than 2.1 million times and the “Time for an Allergist” website has been visited more than 172,000 times by PCPs and patients. We were also pleased to learn that 9,500 of these PCP’s also used our search feature to find an allergist near them.
We will be launching another new initiative later this year to provide resources that practicing allergists in community settings can use to train interested fellows/residents/students from their local medical schools and help them to obtain “real world” experience. Be on a lookout for more information about this program that will include a special session at the College’s 2023 Annual Meeting.
Vision Forward is a “living” document that is being refined from year to year, to ensure the College stays responsive to our members’ needs. If you or your committees have ideas you would like to see implemented, please get in touch with us.
