The response was quite amazing and surprising, regarding the amount of people who really embraced this. After I won the election at ACEP15, I had people stop after the Council meeting to talk about how important this was, thanking me for doing this. So this clearly has been important to the membership, but how could we move forward? We hired a consultant to help us work through how we could approach this. We put together a summit, and two directives came from it: why are we doing this, and we needed a task force to come up with some strategies and tactics. Using the information from that terrific group, I sat down with Dr. Steve Stack and Dr. Sandy Schneider and put together an editorial that was published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.²

There are a couple of key points regarding why ACEP should do this. Our population is diversifying, and in some cities, those considered a minority are actually a majority in the population. Medical students are also diversifying. In fact, the Association of American Medical Colleges is focused on regulations for medical schools that they must recruit medical students that reflect the communities around them.

The percentage of women in emergency medicine is below the average that is in our medical schools. We’re not capturing women and other minorities in the same way that other specialties are.

Our leadership doesn’t always reflect membership, even with women not making up 50 percent of our specialty. Where’s the disconnect? We’re not capturing all of our talent or all the types of people that we have. What about the care we deliver? We know that genders experience pain or different diseases differently. We know that people in different cultures describe their symptoms differently and have cultural differences, which impact health care choices.

Our task force has identified three priorities: 1) engaging the emergency medicine community, 2) identifying and tackling barriers to professional development, and 3) the health disparities piece.

In the end, we’re stronger as a College and specialty if we’re accepting of all of our unique differences.

KK: What’s going on that people should expect to see in the future?

RP: A partnership with the CDC to combat the opioid crisis.

• A collaboration with The Joint Commission to improve safety of boarded mental health patients.
• Wellness resources derived from a wellness summit including many emergency medicine organizations.
• Collaborative work with ABEM regarding the maintenance of certification process.

KK: Let’s end with your elevator speech. Convince me to renew my membership next year.