CEO Update, January 2026

Jan 26 eNewsletter

Wow! What a course. With only the second iteration of our new Exploring Advances in the Surgical & Medical Management of Allergic & Inflammatory Disease: 2026, fondly nicknamed our Explorers Course, Dr. Villwock and the faculty kept true to the promise of deeper dives into engaging, cutting edge, practical content you need today in your patient care. One of the attendees commented, “Look, it is 7:30 pm on a Friday night, and I am still here.” Great commentary on the depth of the content covering everything from environmental extremes and their impact on allergic and inflammatory airway disease, immunodeficiencies, autoimmune disease and recalcitrant sinus disease, ocular, and endocrine influences on allergy to the sinus biome, viome and microbiome, frontal sinus management with in office and OR pearls, nontraditional food allergy therapies, nutraceuticals, probiotics, supplements, and natural remedies you should be asking patients about. The faculty did a tremendous job deciphering these hot topics to share insights in what our members need to know and what patients are asking or, worse, not sharing.

Balancing the new course content, we rolled out a new approach with vendors. Rather than the traditional exhibit hall where folks stand around eating breakfast, we hosted Demo Labs.  Attendees were grouped in small cohorts to have meaningful conversation with our vendor partners on their products, devices, and tools. Someone commented it was a great opportunity to learn how peers were using the products or what questions they had to better expand my own thinking. The vendors saw it a nine candid focus groups with their end users. It went beyond networking to more peer-to-peer sharing to benefit our members and our vendors.  Thanks to everyone who took a chance with us on this new format.  The response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Suffer a little FOMO now? You still have an opportunity to participate and benefit from the 2026 Explorers. As with the Basic Course, this course is offered as a hybrid with 60 days of content access post the live component to expand your access to our content. You can still register, and all the content is live now on Whova, our meeting app. Click the link below:

https://www.aaoallergy.org/education/aaoa-explorers-course-2026/

As you are planning your professional development year for you and your staff, AAOA has several options.   Our 2026 Basic Course in Allergy & Immunology is open now for registration.  As a hybrid, the pre-work launched in June, giving attendees some core fundamentals prior to the live component July 9-11 at The Diplomat Hotel & Resort in FL. This program also offers 60 days on post live content access on demand. This broadens the education to a 90 day tool rather than the old 3-day only format to help you and your staff learn the skills necessary to advance your allergy care.

AAOA Basic Course in Allergy and Immunology 2026

We also have our Education Stacks, USP General Chapter <797> tools, and our Practice Resource Tool Kit to augment our CME programming and give you the tools and resources you need.  Not only do the stacks offer core content sourced from our CME courses to help you add or expand your allergy service line, all of these tools are intended to support you in training your staff with tools you can use in the office.  

Have a need or idea? Share what would be useful. We are happy to consider new content to add value.