AAAAI president-elect hopes to develop valuable resources, help residents get involved

Key takeaways:

• Virant hopes to create a brochure on what allergy, asthma and immunology specialists do.
• He also wants to raise the number of awards that allow residents to attend the annual AAAAI meeting for free.

In his 2025 to 2026 term as American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology president, Frank S. Virant, MD, FAAAAI, plans to develop valuable tools for clinicians and patients and assist residents in getting involved with the organization.

“My focus is on how we can help the clinicians, which is probably 90% of our 6,000 or so members,” Virant, who begins his term at the upcoming 2025 AAAAI/World Allergy Organization Joint Congress, Feb. 28 to March 3, told Healio.

Prior to stepping into this position, Virant sat down with Healio to talk about his goals as president and how his past experiences have prepared him for this role.

Goals

During his presidency, Virant hopes to accomplish several things, with one being a task force that will create an electronic brochure to be shared with primary care providers and the public on how allergy, asthma and immunology specialists can help.

“A lot of the public and a lot of primary care providers don’t know exactly what we do,” Virant said. “While most people appreciate that we treat airborne, food, drug and venom allergy, as well as related asthma and atopic dermatitis, many people aren’t aware that our members are skilled in treating rhinosinusitis, persistent asthma, eosinophilic esophagitis, chronic spontaneous urticaria, recurrent angioedema and other conditions, even when allergy is not involved.”

Once this brochure is developed and finalized, the plan is to have it available to AAAAI members in a printable format for their waiting rooms to educate patients’ families and friends, as well as a digital format for their websites or to share when educating their primary care colleagues.

Virant believes this valuable resource will educate and benefit both clinicians and patients.

Virant also hopes to develop a “well-defined methodology” for the newly introduced living practice parameters that are updated by the joint AAAAI and American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology task force.

“In many cases, new diagnostics and therapeutics are changing so rapidly it doesn’t make sense to redo practice parameters every 10 years,” Virant said.

With more regular, timely short “living” updates to practice parameters, Virant told Healio it will be easier for AAAAI members to be aware of such changes, and to show third party payers that such treatments are not experimental. The published addendums will greatly aid members in these discussions.

Notably, one goal of Virant’s that is already planned is the 6-hour Practice Management Course that will take place on one day at the 2026 AAAAI Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

A similar workshop has previously been given over 3 days during the summer, but Virant wants to make sure the valuable information covered over those days reaches those who were not able to attend the summer sessions but who routinely attend the annual winter meeting.

“I’m hoping this will be successful and something that’s carried on for quite some time,” Virant said.

Regarding the annual congress meeting, Virant also shared that he would like to raise the number of awards they give out under the Chrysalis Program that allows mainly residents to attend the meeting for free.

“We do about 60 awards a year, and last year, we had well over 100 interested applicants,” Virant said.

“We’re going to hopefully bump that up by 15% to 20%,” he added. “Obviously, all of that requires pairing with mentors, and there’s a cost involved, but we think that’s well served.”

Virant told Healio his last main goal is to address the simultaneous rise in patients with allergies and decrease in clinicians who can treat them.

“The percentage of allergic people in the U.S. has almost doubled over the last 25 years,” Virant said. “Between physician burnout and natural retirement, we’re not replacing even what needs to be replaced, let alone with the increasing potential patient volume. If we can’t step up and serve that need, we will see decreased patient access and potentially suboptimal outcomes.”

To combat this issue, Virant is hoping to raise funding that will be used as a partial grant to allow several existing programs to add more training positions.

In a more general sense, Virant also plans to continue to improve communications and advocacy efforts.

“I'll be on the board 1 year after my presidential term, which gives me an opportunity to patch up the pieces and hopefully help get it all done,” Virant said.

Leadership experience

Looking back on how he worked his way up to the AAAAI president position, Virant credited two of his early role models within his private practice who were presidents of the Allergy Academy — William E. Pierson, MD, (1991) and Gail G. Shapiro, MD (2001).

With their mentorship, Virant first got involved with AAAAI through its committee for sinus disease, which he eventually chaired, because of these influences.

“There are probably a couple hundred people I’ve known for 36 years because of AAAAI,” Virant told Healio. “It creates a nice secondary family network.”

Virant also believes his experience as chair of the AAAAI Foundation 20 years ago prepared him for his new leadership position.

“The primary goal of the foundation was to award research training grants for 3 years to people that were done with their fellowship, but didn’t yet have enough research data to be successful in procuring an NIH grant,” Virant said.

“We started simple with one faculty development award a year, and now it’s up to three, and some years four awards that are provided annually,” he continued.

Additional leadership positions that Virant noted as helpful in getting him to where he is today include president of the Trans-Pacific Allergy Society and associate program director of the Allergy/Immunology Training Fellowship at the University of Washington.

“I’m really looking forward to being AAAAI president,” Virant told Healio. “It’s a bit daunting to try to get all this done, but fortunately, we have a wonderful board and support staff.”

For more information:

Frank S. Virant, MD, FAAAAI, can be reached at fvirant@nwasthma.com.