Dear AAPM Member,
Happy New Year!
On this last day of 2024, I am writing to thank each of you for your dedicated service throughout the year. We’ve accomplished much. Work is steadily progressing on the FDA Acute Low Back Pain Guidelines, and the Topical Analgesics for Neuropathic Pain manuscript is approaching the finish line. We will soon send it to Pain Medicine Journal for open-access peer review. In September, we hired our education manager to increase our full-time staff and committed to education growth.
A grant from Mainstay Medical fully funded the 2024 AAPM Scholars Program, and we secured an unrestricted grant from Saluda Medical to produce closed-loop neuromodulation segments for Pain Rounds in 2025, a value-add to existing subscribers and an opportunity for others to participate in an updated Pain Rounds Course. We revived our Giving Tuesday efforts. The Foundation is working on two promising grant opportunities for 2025.
We engaged a new accountant to clean up our accounting and provide the appropriate work papers for our clean 12.31.23 audit. We also added bill.com to streamline our AP process and increase accuracy. We updated our Investment Policy Statement and have a plan for cash flow management that will allow our reserves to continue working hard for the Academy. The Board and the Finance Committee collaborated exceptionally well to approve the 2025 Budget with a positive net operating income target.
I am delighted to report that we did not access our reserves in 2024 for the first time in many years. This could not have happened without a team effort: growing grant and annual meeting revenue and strategically managing our expenses. We have accomplished much, and we have a solid plan for 2025. We certainly have our work cut out for us, and with the support of the Academy and Foundation Boards of Directors and all of our volunteer leaders, we will have another successful year.
Speaking of leaders, be sure to cast your vote in the 2025 Board of Directors and Nominating Committee Elections. The deadline to vote is January 17th, 2025, at 11:59 pm PST. Active, Senior, and Trainee (Fellows) members with a current membership may vote in the election. Log into your member dashboard at aapm.member365.org. Click on the arrows in the box to the right of the welcome message to navigate to your link and cast your vote. Visit AAPM 2025-2026 Elections | 2025-2026 Elections to learn more about the nominees.
Charles Argoff, MD
AAPM President