1. Media. Via 200+ reporter interviews and 100+ news stories, we provided factual, accurate info about pharmacy compounding and pushed back against drugmaker misrepresentation. (We also host reporters in a dozen on-background pharmacy tours and conducted a standing-room-only briefing on shortage drug compounding for Capitol Hill staffers.)

2. Best practices. We released a handful of best practice guidance documents for our members, as well as a detailed brief on reported adverse events associated with compounded GLP-1s. Find them all here.

3. Is it legit? To help patients have confidence that the entity dispensing their medications is a legitimate state-licensed pharmacy, we created a tool for looking them up on state board of pharmacy websites.

4. Membership growth. For the first time, APC’s membership count topped 5,000, including more than 220 Pharmacy-Facility members.

5. Advising state boards of pharmacy. We shared letters and testimony — our expert perspective — with 25 state boards of pharmacy on a range of issues, from California’s excessive sterile compounding regs to missteps by states in considering sublingual GLP-1s as “essentially copies” of FDA-approved drugs. 

6. Big events. Our 2024 Owner Summit in LaJolla was our largest ever (and the upcoming 2025 Owner Summit is shaping up to be even bigger). Compounders on Capitol Hill in September was our largest since 2019. And we held our first-ever, completely-experimental, standing-room-only Pharmacy Compounding Legal Symposium at CCH — which will become a regular part of CCH in 2025.

7. Whadaya say, FDA? For all our frequent frustration with FDA actions, we work hard to provide credible perspective on to the agency. This year we accomplished that in two listening sessions and a dozen comment letters on issues like drugmaker requests that the agency prohibit GLP-1 compounding and the agency’s draft criteria for the Demonstrably Difficult to Compound List.

Whew. What a year! And also: What, a year? It’s flown by, and it’s been one of the highest honors of my career to lead our profession through it. I’m deeply grateful to the Board of Directors, our terrific APC staff, and to you for giving me that privilege. I will continue to do what I can to help promote, protect, and advance this great profession.

Best wishes for a bright new year.

—Joe

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Joseph P. Navarra, RPh, FACA, FAPC is the owner of Town Total Compounding Center in Woodbury, New York. You can reach him at joseph.navarra@towntotalcompound.com.