MSAA’s Improving Lives Benefit: Corporate Honoree

For nearly a decade, MSAA has partnered with Medscape on developing innovative educational programs for the MS community. MSAA was honored in 2016 to receive Medscape Education’s “Partner in Patient Education and Health” award at their Patient Empowerment Celebration, and we are so proud to honor Medscape as MSAA’s Corporate Honoree at our annual Improving Lives Benefit on May 13, 2021.

Medscape presents exceptional clinical content through creative design, aimed at promoting higher education and learning. This expertise, combined with Medscape’s expansive membership of more than 200,000 primary care providers and neurologists, has enabled the delivery of quality educational programming to the healthcare professionals who are instrumental in the lives of individuals with MS.

Our joint commitment to improving care for those living with MS has served as the foundation of our relationship from the beginning, and our work together continues to meet the needs of the MS community. We are currently partnering on Medscape’s “Clinical Advances in Elevating Health Equity” initiative, a new project that will explore the impact of ethnicity and race on MS care.

This past year has been challenging for all of us, with COVID-19 impacting how educational programs are developed and disseminated. MSAA launched our COVID-19 and MS Pathfinder digital tool to help provide up-to-date information about living with MS during the pandemic, and Medscape likewise developed a learning center to ensure that healthcare professionals had access to the latest information.

“At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we recognized the need to deliver trusted, current information and education to our global members in a timely manner,” explains Douglas Kaufman, Medscape Education’s Group Vice President. “As the science was rapidly evolving, we were committed to providing our members worldwide the information they needed on the front lines.

“We launched the COVID-19 Learning Center in February 2020, which has reached more than 2 million healthcare professionals worldwide with CME/education, expert insights, tools and resources to stay current during these unprecedented times. Our clinical teams across Medscape also published more than 8,000 unique informational articles and hosted many discussions with clinicians seeking information on Medscape.”

In addition to developing much-needed content around best practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, Medscape also identified new ways of delivering programming to healthcare professionals. “The way we educate evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic as we saw a greater shift to digital, and a move away from live in-person education opportunities, often hosted at clinical congresses,” Mr. Kaufman shared.

“We launched Medscape’s Virtual Symposium and Conference solutions to simulate a live education experience in a virtual space, one that still included interactivity and networking opportunities for clinicians, allowing members to still have access to the latest information in their field, within a new digital format.”

MSAA’s annual Improving Lives Benefit has been one of our signature events throughout the last decade. As we work to redesign and launch this event virtually to the entire MS community, we are honored to highlight Medscape Education and our longstanding partnership.

This vital collaboration allows us to share both our expertise and our access to providers and patients. As a result, we are able to better reach, educate, and improve clinical practice as well as the quality of life for those with MS.

This longstanding relationship and our lack of personal connection during the past year is what has Mr. Kaufman most excited about being honored at MSAA’s first virtual Improving Lives Benefit. “During this unusual year, one thing that has been missing for all of us is the opportunity to connect with our colleagues and peers in the ways that we have in the past. We are looking forward to this event to be able to engage with the MS community, to network and connect with colleagues to honor our shared commitment to improving the lives of patients with MS.”

MSAA echoes Medscape’s sentiment and we look forward to coming together in celebration of the MS community. For more details about MSAA’s Improving Lives Benefit – Together at Home, please visit: support.mymsaa.org/benefit.

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