ACOI 2026: Celebrating the Osteopathic Way

Greetings, everyone! I hope all is well with each of you and your families. We are less than six months away from the biggest gathering of osteopathic internists anywhere in the world, and I can’t help but be excited for the opportunity to meet new people, learn new things, and nurture genuine relationships.

I would like to take this opportunity to formally invite you to attend this year's Annual Convention at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort & Spa in Palm Springs, California. For those of you who have already committed to attending, I would like to express my gratitude for your willingness to support our efforts early during our planning process. To those of you who haven’t yet decided one way or another yet, I ask that you please consider attending and joining us in-person for this one-of-a-kind experience.

No matter where you are in your decision to attend this year’s convention, I want you to know that ACOI needs you: your in-person presence, your input, and your participation. Your presence and participation at our Annual Convention make the dreams of so many people possible. Students, our future internal medicine colleagues, are hoping to catch a glimpse of the physicians they can become. Patients are waiting to benefit from all the new and improved versions of their osteopathic internists. Colleagues are hoping to reconnect with one another. Your presence at our Annual Convention helps make all of these dreams a little more possible.

This year’s event will follow the theme Connecting to the DO Within: IM—the Osteopathic Way. What does this mean, and why is it so important, especially now? This summer marks 152 years since A.T. Still began to formulate a new way of healing people now known as osteopathic medicine, and 103 years since osteopathic physicians began to formulate osteopathic internal medicine. Our profession and specialty have come so far, and I am thankful for and proud of the great impact we’ve had collectively on countless lives. Today, more than ever, osteopathic internists are being sought after for their skills and expertise by every corner of our society, every corner of our world.

Now that our distinct brand of internal medicine is so well-established and less burdened by the challenges of the past, we now need to understand what it will become going forward, as the numbers in our ranks continue to increase. Collectively, where will we take osteopathic internal medicine? How will we continue to keep it unique?

I believe we will be further prepared to answer these questions by connecting to the DO within. This, in my view, means reflecting upon the relevance of understanding our patients as complex wholes instead of individual parts. It also means understanding the bidirectional relationship of structure and function along with the systems our bodies are equipped with to heal themselves. We must consider how we will continue to reply upon these truths as our guiding principles in exam rooms, EHRs, and grand rounds lecture halls.

This year’s Annual Convention will be an experience that allows you to participate in answering these questions, enjoy the company of colleagues, both inspire and be inspired by our students, and remember why we chose to do IM—the Osteopathic Way. I am sincerely looking forward to being in your presence.

Watson Ducatel, DO, MPH, CPH, FACOI