"It's the most wonderful time of the year...." As it is fast approaching, you might think of Christmas, or even Thanksgiving, when you hear this phrase, but I am referring to the National Chiropractic Leadership Conference (NCLC)! There is simply no other event like it. NCLC 2018 will be my 5th NCLC and my second as a doctor, and it truly is my favorite time of the year! I consider it an honor to attend this event and I have met some of my closest friends while attending. I’d like to share my insights into the event and my take on its’ importance.

The 14th Annual SACA Leadership Conference (LC) was held at Logan University in Chesterfield Mo., Sept. 29 through Oct. 1. The theme for this extraordinary event was “Building Bridges Through Leadership.” Students left the conference with a deeper understanding of the importance of continued involvement in ACA and a better grasp of the association’s new direction. 

Nearly two years ago, ACA embarked on a new journey – a branding initiative – to better understand how we can relate to and remain relevant to members now and in the future. We hired a well known branding consultant who reached out to members, non-members, other health care providers and a variety of stakeholders to ask what ACA means to them. After more than 30 hours of interviews, hundreds of survey responses and volumes of research, our consultant’s recommendations were presented to ACA’s Board of Governors last year on how best to redefine our brand. The results were a wake-up call, to say the least. While some of the information uncovered was expected, other findings and comments were uncomfortable to hear. But we had to hear them. 

Thanks to the world of technology and the internet, everything is transformed: how we communicate, how we engage in activities, and how we work together to make a better world for tomorrow.  As these changes have occurred, so has the way in which we remain relevant to our members and to the overall health care system.  Our self reflection through our strategic planning process revealed that for too long there has been what some might describe as a “class system” at ACA composed of two tiers: the leadership and everyone else. Some even feel that the long path to ACA leadership creates a division between our leaders and members.

Whether you call yourself chiropractic physician, doctor of chiropractic or chiropractor, the definition of who you are and what you do is largely determined by the services that you are trained and tested competent to provide. Although the 50 states and the territories have different enabling acts created at varied times, the thread that binds us is that we are physicians/doctors of chiropractic. We are trained to take a history, perform an examination, render a diagnosis and treat, co-treat, manage, comanage or refer our patients. The standardization is largely due to upgrading our education over the years and the creation of the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) and National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE).