HOPA Publications Committee
Bonnie Labdi, PharmD RPh, Chair
Ashley Glode, PharmD BCOP, Vice Chair
David DeRemer, PharmD BCOP, Board Liaison
Brandi Anders, PharmD BCOP Megan Bodge, PharmD
Megan Brafford, PharmD BCOP
Courtney Cavalieri, PharmD BCOP Morgan Culver, PharmD BCOP
Morgan E. Culver, PharmD BCOP
Erika Gallagher, PharmD BCOP
Lisa Lohr, PharmD BSPharm BCOP BCPS
Jennifer Kwon, PharmD BCOP
Trevor McKibbin, PharmD MS BCOP
Christan Thomas, PharmD BCOP
Board Update: New Beginnings at HOPA
Scott Soefje, PharmD MBA BCOP FCCP
HOPA President
HOPA starts a major new beginning this year as a provider of recertification education for the Board Certified Oncology Pharmacy (BCOP) program. While HOPA has been providing BCOP programming at our Annual Meeting for several years, that programming was in collaboration with the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, and was offered as a convenience to our members. We did organize and develop the programming and gain valuable insight into what the oncology pharmacist wanted, but we were not the official providers. This year we move into official-provider status and I want to spend time out- lining what this means for oncology pharmacists.
To understand how HOPA became a provider, you need to know a little history. The 2015 response to a request for proposal (RFP) was not the first time that HOPA had planned to respond to the Board of Pharmaceutical Specialties (BPS) call for new programs. Several years ago, the HOPA board authorized a group to develop a proposal in anticipation of BPS putting out an RFP. This proposal was never submitted, because BPS put a freeze on new program development while it conducted a self-study to determine the effectiveness of board certification for pharmacists. HOPA participated in BPS task forces to provide feedback on the benefits and needs of the certification process. In 2015, the call went out again for providers for BPS programming. HOPA submitted to become a BCOP provider and heard from BPS in mid June 2015 that we had been accepted as one of two providers.
Then the real work started. Our proposal was that we would start the offering in January 2016. We had to develop the infrastructure, the committees, the process, and, finally, the content to offer our first webinar by February 2016. A daunting task for any organization, but I can say, HOPA pulled it off exceptionally well. We also listened to our membership and designed a BCOP recertification program that meets the current needs of the oncology pharmacist. We are offering 38 hours per year of qualified recertification education credits. These are broken down into four different offerings. Let us take a closer look at each offering.
First are the Emerging Issues in Oncology Pharmacy webinars. Five webinars, 1 hour each, will recap the best of and most important information needed by oncology pharmacists from five of the top oncology meetings including ASH, San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, ASCO, ASPHO, and ASBMT Tandem Meetings. These webinars will be live and enduring allowing you to view them on your own schedule. We then have the programming at the Annual Meeting in Atlanta. This programming will be 8 hours and will be repeated at the Practice Management Symposium in Chicago and eventually made an enduring program online. We listened to members and no longer do you have to get all 8 hours at one venue. You can mix and match as it suits your needs.
New this year, HOPA is beginning our third live annual program with the Oncology Pharmacy Updates Course. This course will focus on BCOP-level content that, over a 3-year period, will cover all of the core elements required for BCOP recertification. This is not an entry level course. We heard from members that there was a need to “ramp up the content” to reflect the level of practice a BCOP pharmacist provides. Held in July every year, this course provides that higher level of learning and will be a live session offering 10 hours of credit. This content will ultimately be put online as well. Lastly is the Self-Study Online Program. This 15-hour pro- gram is a mix of case-based learning and literature review focusing on new advances that will affect oncology pharmacy practice. This program will be entirely online and will allow self-paced learning.
This programming provides an exciting new start to the BCOP offerings for HOPA. We feel we have developed a diverse set of pro- grams that will meet the educational needs of our members, but we still want your feedback. As you can see, many of the ideas and programming are based directly on feedback from the members, so it is extremely important that you continue to provide that feedback.
Our Annual Meeting offers another opportunity for beginnings— our first off-site preconference symposium. Emory University has opened up its campus to offer the preconference “Phase I Clinical Trials: Establishing a Culture and Infrastructure for Conducting Drug Development Studies.” We have other preconference offerings in bone marrow transplantation and immuno-oncology, so we hope there is something for everyone.
Every year we struggle to bring in a keynote speaker that excites, interests, and provides relevant information to the oncology pharmacist. I hinted in an earlier address that we would have a special speaker, and I am very pleased that this year we were able to get one of the most popular requests on the member feedback to be our speaker. We are pleased to welcome Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD PhD, a leading cancer physician and researcher, as our John G. Kuhn Keynote lecturer. You may know Dr. Mukherjee as the author of The Laws of Medicine and The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2011. The latter book was converted into a 6-hour Public Broad- casting Service (PBS) offering by Ken Burns and Barak Goodman, which aired on PBS in March 2015. We look forward to Dr. Mukherjee’s insights and views on cancer care.
While 2015 was an exceptional year for HOPA—our accomplishments are numerous, our external connections grew, and we see a strong and healthy organization—I can only imagine what 2016 will bring us. We are definitely off to a great start. New beginnings bring great new opportunities. So make sure you take advantage of the BCOP offerings and I hope to see every one of you at the Annual Meeting in Atlanta.
Happy New Year!