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2016-2020 Strategic Plan
May 11, 2016
It is my very great pleasure to present The Institute for Functional Medicine’s 2016–2020 Strategic Plan Digest. Through more than six months of diligent and creative effort, a large cohort of IFM leaders, staff, consultants, faculty, and supporters have evaluated our progress over the last five years, giving opinions, providing data, research, reports, and deeply thought out ideas to help clarify the needs of patients and practitioners, the influences that shape the healthcare environment, the challenges and opportunities that lie before us, and the strategies that will help us achieve our mission: making Functional Medicine the standard of care.
IFM has evolved from being the leader in Functional Medicine education to functioning as the nucleus of an ecosystem—the movement leader, if you will. This change reflects the great opportunity that is now before us—to strengthen and expand this ecosystem so that it generates an unprecedented level of buy-in and adoption from practitioners, patients, consumers, health systems, academic medicine, and third-party payers both nationally and globally. We take this responsibility very seriously and, at the same time, are very excited at the prospect!
As the months and years unfold, we know that things will change. Health care is complex and medical science is evolving rapidly, as are the technologies that inform us, disrupt the status quo, and expand our horizons. It’s good to realize that strategic planning is intended to forecast about 75% of an organization’s activities; the remaining 25% cannot be fully anticipated and should be reserved for responding to emerging opportunities and changes in the marketplace.
We have done our best to build a plan that will empower us to achieve our overarching 2020 strategic objectives:
- significantly expanding reach and capacity
- substantially improving clinical skills and practice implementation
- strengthening the Functional Medicine evidence base
- catalyzing and integrating innovative and emerging trends
A vision of this magnitude can only be accomplished through the collective engagement, passion, support, and coordinated efforts of all of us—practitioners, patients, supporters, stakeholders, leaders, and visionaries. Let’s do this!
With warmest wishes and sincere thanks,
Laurie Hofmann, CEO