By Denise Williams | News & Views
2021 proved to be a mixed bag for the CR and PR community, and for the world at large. The arrival and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines early in the year brought some much-needed relief and a tantalizing dose of normalcy. Unfortunately, emerging mutations of the coronavirus and other factors collided, keeping the pandemic going. The good news is that we are nothing if not resilient, and we still got down to business in 2021—not business as usual, but business nonetheless!
The virtual space, so critically important in 2020, continued to be paramount. It is where we met to connect with patients and each other, to lobby for changes to benefit PR and CR, to learn and more. AACVPR, always a resource, stepped in with a webinar bundle laser-focused on the nuances of the virtual CR and PR experiences. News & Views helped spread the word through our article Recovery Is Within Reach, With Hybrid Rehab, with commentary from some of the webinar presenters. We additionally showcased how the pandemic failed to upstage observances such as PR Week and CR Week and how other events, including Day on The Hill and even the 36th Annual Meeting, actually thrived in their virtual formats.
Speaking of the Annual Meeting, the event was a turning point for some leadership and personnel changes at AACVPR. The presidency was transferred to Dr. Amy Knight, PhD, ABPP, who penned a News & Views piece on healthcare equity ahead of her keynote address at the conference. You can read the article here if you missed it or her speech, and you can also bet we’ll be hearing (and reporting) more on this important topic in 2022! In other transitions, AACVPR welcomed a new operations manager earlier this year and, more recently, three new board directors. In case you haven’t made their acquaintance just yet, we introduced them here and here, respectively. Our article Passing the Torch on AACVPR Advocacy, meanwhile, informed readers about the switch from longtime lobbying group GRQ Consulting to a new partner.
Some names and faces may have changed, but one thing did not: members’ thirst for knowledge. That was evident based on the most-read News & Views articles this year. Some of your favorites included:
Also highly popular this year among readers was the series of articles highlighting AACVPR’s various partnerships. In Dying to Smoke, Quitting to Live, we turned the spotlight on the organization’s collaboration with CDC’s TIPS From Former Smokers® campaign. Meanwhile, readers were able to learn more about the COPD-SOS project, which focuses on undiagnosed populations, in America’s COPD Emergency. And over the last couple of months, we have reported on the latest developments with the Million Hearts CR Think Tank, the upcoming World Heart Games and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Comprehensive CR Workshop. And, of course, we continued to preview research content from each of JCRP’s six issues.
The outlook for 2022 remains to be seen, but you can be sure that whatever direction it takes, News & Views will be there to cover it for you! See you next year!