Community, Innovation, and Networking at the Heart of AMCP 2025

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) conference is highly valued for fostering a sense of community and strategic thinking among managed care pharmacy professionals. Here is what several attendees who spoke with The American Journal of Managed Care^® during the meeting to had to say about why they attend the event:

• Susan Cantrell, CEO of AMCP
• Adam Colborn, JD, associate vice president for congressional affairs, AMCP
• Neha Kashalikar, PharmD, director of strategic pharmacy consulting, MassHealth
• Sam Peasah, PhD, MBA, RPh, director for the Center of High-Value Health Care, UPMC

This transcript was lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What is your favorite part about attending the AMCP Annual Meeting?

Cantrell: My absolute favorite thing about our conference is that it brings people together, both the annual meeting and Nexus really bring the managed care pharmacy community together to talk about issues and challenges and solutions to some of the problems that they're having, but also to do a lot of strategic thinking. I get excited about that sense of community and excitement that I feel at our meetings. It's always so front and center, and certainly will be the case in Houston.

Colborn: [My] favorite thing about the conference has to be seeing all of my AMCP friends and family. I think our attendees and our members are very dedicated to the profession and to each other, so it's always great to reconnect with them. I think it's an exciting year to be talking about health care. There's a lot of big things going on. GLP-1s [glucagon-like peptide-1s] continue to be a big conversation. AI [artificial intelligence] is only growing in importance, and we have a lot of sessions focusing on those 2 issues. I think probably for this meeting, my favorite thing has to be the AI sessions. We're looking at a lot of emerging, very novel technology that has a big opportunity to change things and make things more expedient.

Kashalikar: I love that there's so much dialog and learning happening everywhere you go. You hear people talking about the sessions that they've gone to, or the networking event that they were just part of, and it's just such a high energy environment, inspiring environment to be a part of. I really enjoy the conferences. I enjoy everything that I get to learn from my colleagues who attend, and it's wonderful to be able to share a little bit about what we do as well.

Peasah: I come to the AMCP for several reasons. I've been coming to AMCP forever, since I was a student. I come almost every year. It's a great place to meet or network. You meet a lot of people, some that were your classmates or some from 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and you bump into them. That is great. Depending on whether you are a student or you are a managed care professional, networking has always been a great thing since we came here.

I also use AMCP to get my CEs [continuing education credits]; there are a lot of educational sections going on, and if you are able to attend them, it helps you.

You are networking and then you are hearing about all the great things that are going on in your profession, and then you get some CEs out of it. Those are the 3 main things that I have benefited [from] since I joined AMCP.