The NAEC Board of Directors and staff met March 17-18, 2016 to develop a strategic framework to address the evolving nature of the organization. NAEC drafted a new vision and mission statement and established general goals with specific objectives and initiatives to guide the association’s work over the next three to five years. NAEC’s first written strategic plan is consistent with the association’s desire to be transparent, action-oriented, and rapidly responsive to the needs of member centers.

The goals of the plan are to:

1. Set a strategic direction with clear goals, objectives, and metrics. NAEC will focus its attention on three goals: standard setting, advocacy, and member center support.

• Standard setting objectives commit NAEC to updating the guidelines for “Essential services, personnel, and facilities in specialized epilepsy centers” to be more comprehensive and evidence-based and aligning accreditation with the guidelines. A longer term objective is to examine how accreditation can better represent center expertise.
• Advocacy objectives concentrate on maintaining support for epilepsy centers at all levels of government and throughout the practice of medicine.
• Member center support objectives continue the current practice of addressing needs of individual centers as they arise but also commit to providing documentation and support for running a comprehensive epilepsy center.

2. Design an infrastructure that can achieve these plans. NAEC board and staff are working above capacity. Additional staff will be added to address an expanding program of work.

With a clear timetable of implementation tasks laid out, the NAEC board set a clear strategic direction that is proactive and forward-thinking and will strengthen the value and importance of NAEC membership. The NAEC board also set metrics for monitoring progress and will re-examine the objectives and initiatives annually to ensure NAEC is on track to achieve its goals. Please click here for an outline of the Association’s strategic plan.