CEO Update, July 2025

“The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food.” — Dean Ornish

We hosted an educational workshop recently. While the intention was to focus on adult education and ways to improve engagement, the big take away for me was the unifying theme that everyone their feels a great sense of community within the AAOA, and it is this community that drives them to not only belong, but to contribute. To me, there is no higher compliment to an organization then this compassion about belonging, perhaps most accurately captured by Coretta Scott King when she said,

“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.”

We expect leadership engagement, but this community concept carried into the Basic Course in Park City. Members attending the meeting, both in person and virtually, were reaching out to each other in the community chat sharing and learning — everything from how to with patients, staffing, and payers to opportunities to connect with each other outside of the classroom.

Thanks to Kevin Wilson, MD, we had over 50 folks ascending the Crystal Lake trail straight up the peaks of Deer Valley. What great camaraderie! The experience carried through with folks sharing pictures and expanding into sharing more about themselves, their practice, their hobbies, and their families. Connections that expand beyond the typical 3-day CME program. We even had folks sharing their office protocols for mock allergy emergencies, on-boarding, SOPs, and more. Organic learning can sometime prove the most effective. It is definitely a great augmentation to the core concepts we teach at the Basic Course. They do say nothing it truly learned until put into practice. And trust me, the folks leaving the course all seems to be brimming with new ideas or concepts they were eager to test.

All this bodes well for our Annual Meeting (hybrid with the live component in Oceanside, CA Nov 14-16). Here we will incorporate more innovative teaching formats, and ask you to bring your toughest cases so we can probe deeper and consider how different practices would approach similar clinical challenges to help everyone find their best solutions. We encourage you to register and send in your cases now to help assure you are part of the conversation.

Hopefully, we all have a little Tupac Shakur in us, and we are each a reflection of our community. I would like to think I am at least a part of the reflection of the AAOA.

See you in Oceanside!