Volume 40 Number 5 | October 2026
Summary
In this opinion piece, Julie McKinney argues that professional association membership must offer clear, tangible value beyond community alone. She calls on ASCLS to strengthen advocacy, mentorship, career development, and engagement while reaching underserved laboratory professionals. Her message: build meaningful benefits, foster belonging, and create experiences worth showing up for.
Julie Andrea McKinney, MLS(ASCP)CM, Volunteer Contributor
When I first sat down to write this, I reached for that Bible quote: “If you build it, they will come.” Turns out that’s not in the Bible. It’s a Kevin Costner movie I still haven’t seen. But the sentiment holds: if you build a community worth belonging to, people will show up for it.
Recently I attended the ASCLS, AGT & SAFMLS Joint Annual Meeting (JAM). I must admit that the event got me fired up with energy to defend, promote, and engage our profession. I wanted to come home to Tennessee and advocate for us in the legislature, and to bring in new members from hospitals and student programs all over the state. Then I remembered how, while I was working a table at the event, someone asked, “What’s in it for me if I join?” And it really struck a chord in me because I didn’t have a good answer (that didn’t sound like a canned commercial response).
At the event, I met some chapter leaders, and each had a similar thing to say. Engagement is down, people don’t want to join local chapters, and even new members don’t sustain their memberships.
“I’ll be honest. Telling people that we’re a community isn’t cutting it anymore.”
I’ll be honest. Telling people that we’re a community isn’t cutting it anymore. We used to promote that ASCLS was a place to be heard and advocated for, a place where like-minded individuals could gather and gripe. It’s not that community doesn’t matter, but our members have got wise to the value of their own time. They’re working short-staffed. They’re picking up doubles. Asking them to spend a precious free evening at a meeting asks a lot, and “you’ll be a part of something” is no longer a fair trade on its own.
So, what would be?
Start with what ASCLS already does well when it’s firing on all cylinders: advocacy. We are the ones in the room on PAMA reimbursement. We are the ones pushing the Medical Laboratory Personnel Shortage Relief Act. When a bill threatens the bench, ASCLS is the organization standing up for the people running the analyzers at 2 am. Most of those people have no idea we’re doing it, though. Every legislative win should come with a plain-language answer of, “by the way, here’s what this means for your paycheck, your license, and your lab.”
Then we should make the tangible stuff genuinely tangible: CEs that are easy to access; mentorship that connects students to working professionals and working professionals to leadership. We should establish and encourage career pipelines that follow people from MLT to MLS and beyond. We should aim for benefits a member can point to when they ask themselves why they pay dues.
And here’s the part I really want us to sit with: we need to widen who we’re even trying to reach. We talk to educators and students because they’re the easy audience. But there’s a whole world of medical laboratory science professionals we barely touch. How often have you seen an ASCLS member in your hospital laboratory? I can tell you right now that in all 11 I’ve worked in, there hasn’t been a single one (or they at least haven’t mentioned it). Military lab professionals are an even smaller world than ours, doing some of the most consequential work in the field, and they are almost invisible in our membership, too. If we’re serious about representing the entire profession, they belong at our table. So do the “regular” bench professionals who have never once considered joining anything.
None of that happens if we keep doing what we’re doing. The same coffee meetup, the same virtual board meeting, the same six faces every month. (I’ll defend the open board meetings, for the record. Transparency is a feature. But it can’t be the whole calendar.) We must have more engaging events. Bring a taco truck to night shift and talk about membership. Have ASCLS leadership walk/run/swim a mile for every new member that signs up during Lab Week. Host a statewide contest for the best Lab Week theme/event/activity. Connect members from different cities so that it’s not just isolated pockets of activity.
I’ll admit my motivation here is not sophisticated. I love this profession, and I love that we keep insisting the people behind the results matter. I love that even those who don’t feel seen, feel heard. But most of all, I want to make sure that this profession survives the burnout, the isolation, and the frustration with lab management.
Build something worth showing up for. They’ll come. Even Kevin Costner knew that, and he didn’t even have a strategic plan.
Julie McKinney is the Administrative Director of the APSU Diagnostic Laboratory at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.