When it was her time to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, Sydney Tu seized the moment.
“You are BRAVER than you believe, STRONGER than you seem, and SMARTER than you think.”
—Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne
It is no understatement that the year 2020 presented us with challenges we did not fully anticipate. However, through every obstacle, we have come together to illustrate our resilience and innovative abilities. We have endured quite a few changes—from adjusting our learning strategies to meet our academic demands, to quickly realizing our emerging, valuable roles in public health so that we may serve our communities in any way we can.
Adapting to changes
As an association, we onboarded our 13th CEO and executive vice president, Scott Knoer, PharmD, FASHP. As an academy, we successfully transformed our traditional programming into relevant, virtual experiences to best meet the needs of our members.
We also introduced several new initiatives to help us connect with one another, an effort that was extremely important when physical distance was required and stay-at-home orders were mandated. On the local level, many of our chapters have done what they can to provide chronic disease management by hosting modified events, such as drive-through health fairs and online educational sessions, while still organizing the much-needed flu vaccine clinics.
In our collective effort against COVID-19, several of our chapters became involved by compounding hand sanitizers as well as by broadcasting our appreciation and support to all frontline heroes. We also contributed to large-scale initiatives to screen, test, and surveillance-test individuals in our communities for coronavirus. These efforts have further progressed to our profession playing an integral role in administering the novel COVID-19 vaccine.
Pharmacy never skipped a beat
As the health care situation became more complex and uncertainties continued to pile up around us, we refused to back down and instead seized the moment to provide the quality care we know we are capable of providing. Our profession never skipped a beat. From time to time, we could not always see where the journey would lead us, but we should be extremely proud of how far we have come.
It has been an absolute pleasure to witness the eagerness of our profession to come together to provide essential services—and to see all health professionals uplifting one another. We have also embraced scientific and technological advances to better equip us during these quickly changing times.
I am hopeful that our future will be even brighter as we apply the lessons we have learned along the way to both obstacles and future endeavors. As we look ahead to this year and the future of our academy, we cannot lose the momentum we have gained. We must always remember to Carpe Momentum—Seize OUR Moment!