PHYSICIANS COMMITTEE FOR RESPONSIBLE MED
5100 Wisconsin Avenue NW 400, Washington, DC 20016 www.pcrm.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: The Physicians Committee promotes preventive medicine, particularly good nutrition, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.

Research and Regulatory AffairsThe Physicians Committee promotes alternatives to animal use in research, testing, and education. The Physicians Committee has a full-time team of physicians, scientists, and research staff raising awareness of the ethical and practical research issues and assisting in the implementation of nonanimal methods in research and education. The Physicians Committee has been instrumental in eliminating animal use in medical school curricula, trauma training courses, and residency programs in the United States and Canada. Many medical schools and centers offer postgraduate residency or other specialized courses, and some of these programs use live animals for training. The Physicians Committee is working to end the use of animals in these programs, which will improve physician training and ensure healthy patient outcomes. As a result of our work, only nine of 285 surveyed emergency medicine residencies continue to use animals. In addition, we have recently begun focusing our efforts on general surgery programs and have discovered that 63 of 259 surveyed U.S. programs are using live animals to train residents. In FY 2020, we launched new campaigns by filing federal complaints to target the use of live animals for advanced medical training at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, the University of Virginia, the Medical College of Georgia, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. We held physician-led demonstrations at the University of Washington and the University of Missouri-Columbia. We posted advertisements urging Brown University, the University of Washington, and the University of Missouri-Columbia to modernize their medical training, in addition to coordinating multiple digital advertising campaigns.The Physicians Committee had planned to hold the first ever North American Summer School on Innovative Approaches in Science at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in June of 2020; the program offered information and education on the latest methodologies for toxicology and medical research. Given the pandemic-associated restrictions, we moved the weeklong program online, with great success. We made the sessions open for individual registration, and more than 600 students and early-career scientists from around the world participated in various lectures from 45 expert speakers, panel discussions, hands-on trainings, and virtual lab tours. The move to a virtual format, while unexpected, was an advantage, with every continent represented in the participant list. Physicians Committee toxicologists also actively promote the recommendations of the National Research Councils (NRC) June 2007 report for the development and implementation of nonanimal-based tests for chemical toxicity. One way in which this work is manifested is in the co-founding and continued support of the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology (ASCCT). In 2020 the ASCCT grew significantly; there are now more than 2,300 scientists on its mailing list, and its annual meeting, which was held in October 2020, has more than 85 presenters and 350 registrants for the three-day online meeting. All will be presenting their work on or discussing issues related to predictive toxicology, the discipline that has evolved from efforts stemming from the NRCs 2007 report. The ASCCTs monthly webinar series attracts between 150 and 300 scientists, students, and regulators from around the world to each session. Because of the switch to online learning and the need for ready learning resources, in March 2020 the ASCCT made its online library of more than 50 webinars available to the general public, and these videos have been viewed more than 1,200 times since Jan. 1, 2020. The Physicians Committee has been working to push the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to incorporate more alternatives to the use of animals in pesticide and chemical testing for more than a decade, and in 2019 we saw the latest evidence that a real change is taking place. The EPA administrator announced that the agency was setting specific goals to reduce its reliance on mammalian tests for assessing chemical safety by 35% by 2025, and by 100% by 2035. This is a direct result of scientific advocacy the Physicians Committee has undertaken with the EPA and the toxicological community at large. Finally, this year the Physicians Committee provided training opportunities to more than 2,500 toxicologists in North America in web and in-person sessions describing new test methods or approaches for safety testing of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products. In some cases, we have feedback from specific regulators that the training has resulted in increased acceptance of nonanimal test methods. The Physicians Committee also continued to schedule New Approach Methodology Use for Regulatory Application (NURA) training series events, designed to teach industry scientists how to use nonanimal approaches to assess the potential hazards of new chemicals they design through multiday, hands-on training events. Two events open to all toxicologists were held, and the presentations were videotaped and posted to an online portal. We were also invited to provide a training on Adverse Outcome Pathways for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2019, and 40 FDA staff attended this four-hour training. Additionally, due to the COVID-19-related lockdowns, we had to modify a number of planned trainings. Two were postponed and were held online in October 2020.

Nutrition EducationThe Physicians Committee Nutrition Department, made up of nutrition experts and project managers, grew a variety of educational programming and outreach centered on promoting a plant-based diet for health. Our first objective was to make vegan diets an integral part of medical care, starting by involving 50,000 clinicians and medical students in our educational programs by 2020 and by promoting vegan meals and the elimination of processed meat in hospitals.To achieve this objective, we maintained key educational resources for clinicians to support their understanding and promotion of plant-based diets. We reached 913 health care professionals through attendance at our 2020 International Conference on Nutrition in Medicine, which took place shortly after the end of the fiscal year. We provided ongoing support and content through our Nutrition Guide for Clinicians, a diagnostic and treatment mobile application tool highlighting the importance of bringing nutrition into clinical practice, reaching a cumulative 42,197 health care professionals and medical students, up from 30,976 in FY 2019. To ensure we stay up to date with the very latest and evolving information in health care, we coordinated an annual information review process and added critical chapters related to COVID-19. To support health care professionals in acquiring mandatory continuing medical education, we host 40+ free credits on NutritionCME.org and reached more than 1,704 professionals by incorporating new content and bolstering digital advertising. We taught nutrition and metabolic maintenance classes to 82 Barnard Medical Center patients on Monday evenings. Our diabetes experts delivered plant-based nutrition education to diabetes professionals in 10 states reaching 1,685 clinicians. The team of diabetes educators delivered individualized diabetes self-management education and support to 38 people through live and online offerings in the Barnard Medical Center. These new programs are recognized by the American Diabetes Association. We also support an active diabetes educator community of interest in coordination with American Association of Diabetes Educators, increasing membership this year to more than 450 diabetes educators committed to using plant-based nutrition in their practice. Another approach we took to meet this objective was through conducting outreach and sharing lifesaving resources and education with medical students. The Physicians Committee facilitated educational lectures at 20 medical schools, reaching 945 students, and conducted two 21-Day Kickstart programs at medical schools which encouraged students to adopt a plant-based diet. Through strategic outreach at medical student conferences, we reached 50 medical students with information about how to use plant-based nutrition in patient care. This strategy had limited reach this year due to many conferences being canceled due to the pandemic. The second objective of the Nutrition Department was to promote an understanding of the risks of meat and dairy products through intensive media promotion and education programs by educating 100,000 people. The Physicians Committee launched a health care provider referral network to connect the broader community with clinicians who have an interest and experience in plant-based nutrition. Since our launch in early 2020, weve added 300 providers worldwide. We have held community-based nutrition education kickstart programs in the United States across multiple cities reaching nearly 1,500 people in Chicago, Wilmington, and Milwaukee. We offered similar programming in a two-day intensive nutrition education immersion format in Washington, D.C., and an online version reaching a total of 400 people. The Physicians Committee also offered nutrition education programming about the risks of meat and dairy products and benefits of plant-based eating for health care professionals and the public in India, China, and Native American communities. In India, we delivered a series of educational lectures on a plant-based diet in five cities reaching 1,570 people. In China, we reached more than 20,600 people through a total of 106 lectures across 66 cities. A 21-Day Healthy Challenge was delivered twice in China, reaching about 9,000 participants via an online platform. We are reaching a variety of Native American communities both directly and indirectly as our intent is to educate and empower Native American health educators and other individuals to share plant-based knowledge, rather than exclusively deliver it ourselves. To that end, we had more than 200 clinicians and lay people attend our Nov. 16, 2019, Food is Medicine for Diabetes full-day community and continuing medical education program in Flagstaff, Ariz., hosted by our partner, Native Americans for Community Action (NACA). We sponsored a multiweek course called Native Food for Life at Kinlani Bordertown Dormitory in Flagstaff, with 15 adults and 20 high school students preparing and eating together each week from January March 2020. We assisted with a 4-Week Healthy Eating Challenge at Tsehootsooi Medical Center in Fort Defiance, Ariz., in January-February 2020, with 30 participants. We sponsored the creation of two new educational videos and several plant-based cooking demonstrations featuring Native Americans, which have been added to the resources at NativePowerPlate.org, which we will continue to promote. We had more than 300 people register for our webinar Cooking & More to Combat COVID-19, co-hosted by the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President and NACA. We distributed a total of 9,000 six-page recipe booklets featuring chef Walter Whitewater of the Navajo Nation and reprinted 10,000 more.The Physicians Committee continued to promote the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart mobile application, available in both English and Spanish, which has now cumulatively reached 200,000 people with menus, recipes, and education and cooking videos to support individuals transitioning to a plant-based diet. Our inaugural 2019 Lets Beat Breast Cancer Campaign reached 12,500 in pledges and 6 million on social media and garnered the support of renowned experts and celebrities who joined together to promote breast cancer prevention through four easy nutrition and lifestyle steps. The Physicians Committee expanded the Food for Life program, an award-winning nutrition education and cooking class program that provides an innovative approach to diet-related chronic diseases. In order to reach communities across the world with the lifesaving education of plant-based nutrition, the Food for Life team trained 64 new instructors joining their now 300 instructor counterparts. Together, they reached approximately 6,260 students in community settings through more than 1,346 individual class sessions across 36 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C., and nine other countries. We also expanded our curriculum to offer five new series: heart health, foods for fitness, brain health, hormone health, and, more recently, Cooking to Combat COVID-19, a curriculum delivered virtually to support those with underlying conditions and health disparities in reducing their risk of COVID-19.

CommunicationsWorking with physicians, health experts, and celebrities who serve as spokespeople, we aim to inform, persuade, and inspire readers through strategic media relations, public relations, digital communications, content generation, social media, celebrity engagement, and advertisements. In the past year, our work was featured and referenced in traditional news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, the Boston Globe, Miami Herald, and the Baltimore Sun. Our message has been reported by wires including the Associated Press, Capitol Hill papers including The Hill, and by major television networks including NBC News and ABC News. International outlets such as CBC, Toronto Star, the Vancouver Sun, and the Daily Mail have covered our campaigns. Each month, we reach a potential audience of 218 million readers by appearing in an average of 212 news outlets.We further amplify this coverage on social media to empower our followers to make lasting health changes. Our social media content has created conversations daily among more than 1.4 million followers on 12 social media accounts.In 2018, we launched The Exam Room podcast. Episodes have since been downloaded more than 2.9 million times. In April 2020, we launched The Exam Room LIVE, which airs daily on Facebook and YouTube. As of July 31, 2020, the show had been viewed 1.5 million times.On our websites, we post news about our peer-reviewed medical studies, our medical perspective on cultural commentary, our recommendations to strengthen scientific research standards, and expert-authored consumer health tips. In FY 2020, the Physicians Committee's websites received about 8 million visitors and 9.3 million page views.

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