Rising Educators, Academicians, and Clinicians Helping Inflammatory Bowel Disease (REACH-IBD)—Promoting Improvement of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Education in the United States

The management of the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) is becoming increasingly complex because of heterogeneity of disease presentation along with multiple patient-related and disease-related factors influencing therapeutic decision-making. The IBD treatment armamentarium has expanded over the past decade, with more immunosuppressive medications available to prescribers, increasing use of therapeutic drug monitoring, and a shift in the treatment goals toward mucosal healing with the “treat to target” strategy in clinical practice.1 Optimal IBD care requires an appropriate knowledge base starting with the ability to assess clinical and endoscopic disease activity and severity across the broad spectrum of disease presentations. In addition, as most IBD medications are immunosuppressive, gastroenterologists need to be aware of the varied indications for the different classes of IBD medications, understand appropriate dosing, duration, and monitoring of therapies, recognize treatment-associated adverse events, and incorporate appropriate health care maintenance measures. Recently, gastrointestinal societies, including the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) and the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA), have published quality indicators to help provide a uniform level of care to patients with IBD and avoid adverse events, poorer quality of life, and worsened disease-associated outcomes.2,3 For example, many patients with IBD are not optimized with appropriate classes of medications, vaccinated for preventable-infectious illnesses, or have had appropriate health care maintenance while on immunosuppressive therapies.4,–7