Building Resiliency and Improving the HPUS
By Todd A. Hoover, M.D., DABHM, Incoming President of HPCUS Board of Directors
I am very pleased to be taking over the helm at the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia Convention of the United States (HPCUS) this coming year. William Shevin has done a remarkable job over the past six years to re-establish the importance of the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States (HPUS) in the minds of consumers and homeopathic leaders who were previously unfamiliar with the essential value that our organization provides for the availability of quality homeopathic medicines in the United States. His outreach programs will continue to generate support and sustainability of the Convention for the next several decades.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, HPCUS has worked steadily to bolster the working frame of the Convention and its committees. To that end, we established a comprehensive set of policies and procedures, instituted a secure and centralized repository for all HPCUS and HPUS data, and improved our monograph submission / review process.
This year the HPCUS Board undertook a lengthy planning initiative to establish primary strategic objectives and specific goals for the next three to five years. The primary focus was to create a comprehensive plan for sustainability of the HPUS and also to identify areas for improvement. The process generated five specific objectives:
- Strengthen operational and governance structures to support the work of HPCUS.
- Ensure the reliability and consistency of published standards and guidelines.
- Develop and maintain sufficient expertise to guarantee consistent quality of future editions of the HPUS.
- Establish an endowment to foster advances in HPCUS capabilities and ensure the sustainability of quality homeopathic medicine availability.
- Identify and solve regulatory challenges for homeopathic medicine manufacture in the United States.
Within each of these strategies, time contingent specific goals have been identified to create the necessary steps for success. HPCUS is keenly aware of the importance of both dialogue and the exchange of expertise with manufacturers such as yourself. We greatly appreciate all those companies who have stepped up to provide the Convention with subject matter expertise that we believe may become an increasingly rare commodity in the future.
As you might discern from the strategic approaches listed above, HPCUS will be embarking on two important drives in the next year: development of an endowment and recruitment of subject matter experts. As these two programs develop, we will reach out again to you and the wider community of manufacturers as indispensable stakeholders. Your support both financially and through the provision of experts to serve with the Convention is essential to the optimal functionality and sustainability of the HPUS.
This year HPCUS was fortunate to recruit a retired FDA compliance expert to join the Convention. His expertise will go a long way to help broaden our knowledgebase for regulatory issues. But we need additional help. Right now, the Convention would greatly benefit from specific expertise in three areas:
- Safety and toxicology with regard to homeopathic medicines,
- Technical support for the Teams/SharePoint environment, and
- Fundraising/marketing.
If you have any team members or know of other motivated individuals with these skills who might be willing to help support the mission of HPCUS, please contact me to initiate the process for them to join the Convention.
Looking back over my past twenty years with HPCUS, I have witnessed the steady transformation from a well-run, but simple non-profit organization to a robust company configuration with the attendant compliance safeguards and structure for succession. We could not have done this without the generous support of the homeopathic industry. Please accept my sincere appreciation for your support as a subscriber to HPUS, as a supplier of subject matter expertise, and as a proponent of homeopathic medicine in the United States.
I have practiced both allopathic and homeopathic medicine for more than 30 years and I have been profoundly impressed with what these homeopathic medicines can accomplish. Because of this I have served as President of the American Institute of Homeopathy, President of the Council on Homeopathic Education, and U.S. Representative to the Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis. In this new role, I plan to work hard to make sure the best quality medicines remain available in the U.S. Let’s work together to keep generating those miracles from homeopathy for many generations to come.
To explore helping HPCUS as Dr. Hoover notes above, please contact him at thoover@hpus.com.