Yet, even with many successes, the roadmap is not finished. There’s a lot of noise in health care, and unfortunately, emergency medicine is not immune to the chaos. Having a partner that influences health policy on state and national levels is more important now than ever. United, we have the opportunity to build on our fantastic history. And although we’ll need to work more tirelessly than ever before, ACEP’s first 50 years provides great confidence that we are in good hands.

Challenging times call for challenging solutions. When change befalls us, we cannot wake up and do the same thing we did 50 years ago, or even yesterday, and expect to survive or thrive. If we take an active role, our training, experience, and partnerships with each other will continue to cut through noise and chaos. We can design necessary changes and continue creating solutions for emergency medicine. Working with ACEP members, staff, committees, task forces, and leaders will make that happen. Our first 50 years provides plenty of supportive evidence!

Congratulations to ACEP on its 50th Anniversary! I’m very proud of our association, and we look forward to more and more collaboration in the next five decades and beyond.

Dr. Pilgrim is enterprise chief medical officer at Schumacher Clinical Partners.