The AAPP Perspective Presidents Blog: Living in the Now While Casting an Eye to the Future

Michelle Geier, PharmD, BCPP

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the months and years pass. Seems like yesterday we were at AAPP 2024 with many of you, and now we are in the final weeks of 2024 fresh off our November Board retreat where we evaluated goals, strategies, and measures of success for your association. During the retreat, we set our eyes on the future and acted to evolve our strategic planning processes to be more fluid and continual to support quick reaction and shifts as needed. Early next year, we will start to introduce the components of this iterative strategic planning process which you will play a critical role in as AAPP members.

While it is our responsibility as a Board to look forward, it is also important to celebrate and build on the accomplishments from 2024. There are oh so many to celebrate, but I am providing my top 5 below.

1. First Outcomes Grant Awarded

The Board took a big leap in 2024 and invested nearly $250,000 to fund research intended to generate high-quality large sample size (n) data sets that evaluate the impact of integrating psychiatric pharmacists into team-based mental health care in studies with multiple research sites and investigators.

This first AAPP Outcomes Grant was awarded in April for the project below. Our Outcomes Research Committee continues to work on another possible grant RFP for 2026.

Psychiatric pharmacist management of cardiometabolic risk for adults with serious mental illness in outpatient safety-net mental health clinics in San Francisco
Primary investigator and co-investigators: Esti Iturralde, PhD, Anne Rosenthal, MD, and Hannah Van Ochten, PharmD, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research

2. Papers Supporting the Profession and its Future Released

As the voice of the profession, AAPP is generating more papers on a routine basis. These papers are developed by task forces with emphasis on the broad impact psychiatric pharmacists are having across the health care system. Recent AAPP papers are consolidated here with the most recent additions being focused on demonstrating the gaps in the behavioral health workforce and the importance of psych pharmacists in filling those gaps as well as the critical roles being played by psych pharmacists in child and adolescent psychiatry.

3. The Year of the Member

Though this is our goal 24/7, 365 days a year, we have placed specific emphasis in this area in 2024 with the launch of the AAPP Fellow Program. The first class of fellows will be announced in January 2025 and installed at AAPP 2025. Expansion of AAPP awards has also been top of mind this year as the Awards Task Force works on developing 3 new awards to launch in fall of 2025 to complement the existing highly regarded Judith J Saklad Memorial Award. Expanded strategic initiatives such as those described in this article equal the need for more volunteers. As such, we are thrilled that dozens of more volunteers are engaging in standing and ad-hoc volunteer roles than ever before.

4. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Efforts Expand

AAPP’s first formal DEI plan was released earlier this year and provides even more goals surrounding work we have conducted on an ongoing basis since our founding. One of the most visible activities from the plan includes the launch of a DEI Grant to AAPP 2025, funded by the AAPP Foundation through memorial gifts in memory of Past President Ann Richards. The expansion and formalization of the Ambassador Program which assists in funding member accepted proposals to select interprofessional conferences is another key initiative. Lastly, concrete steps have been instituted by all programming committees to recruit diverse faculty for AAPP educational products.

5. Advocating for You and the Profession

One of the measures of success evaluated by the Board is the extent to which psychiatric pharmacy is growing in recognition amongst others including regulatory agencies, legislators, other health care professional associations, and more. AAPP’s and the profession’s visibility has ratcheted up significantly in the past 5 years and continued that growth in 2024. Serving as the voice of you and your patients allows us to be active in clozapine REMS advocacy with the FDA, in telehealth advocacy with the DEA, with legislators working on bills offering solutions to bridging gaps in mental health and substance use treatment, and much more. A shout out to all of you who are raising your voice at the local, state, and/or national level related to these same issues. A nudge of encouragement to do so if you are not. Many loud and repeatedly loud voices are needed.

So, 6 months into my tenure as your Board President, I want you to know what a pleasure it is to work alongside fellow Board members and you on behalf of the profession I love. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I wish you a fun-filled and joyous holiday season. We are excited to work with you to continue our progress in 2025!