Spine professionals have many challenges. Two of the most significant challenges in today’s health care environment are prior authorization and appropriate and fair payment for the services that we provide. Because of our multispecialty nature, NASS has a special position and role to play in advocacy for all spine professionals. NASS has been fortunate to have many excellent staff and volunteers focus on evidence collection and guideline production under our Evidence Analysis and Research Council lead by Dr. Steven Hwang. We also have a robust Advocacy & Health Policy Council lead by Dr. Karin Swartz. Dr. Chris Kaufman plays a key role in these efforts as our Administration Council Chair. Donna Lahey, RN, plays an important role as our Coding Committee Chair. NASS’ Payor Policy Review Committee, under Dr. Scott Cowen, and our Coverage Committee led by Drs. Byron Schneider and Mo Bydon are also instrumental in ensuring that our members, and the field, garner fair coverage from payers. In this complex health care landscape, it is vital to leverage the strength of multiple organizations to achieve our mutual goals of providing the best care to our patients. Collaboration is key. Collaboration is necessary. The time for collaboration is now. One of the current challenges for spinal surgeons is the authorization of interbody devices when performing an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. New developments in material technology permit the use of PEEK and titanium cages in the cervical spine. Unfortunately, Aetna, a payer that covers approximately 21 million American lives, does not consider these new developments to be medically necessary. As a result, many patients are left to settle for cadaver bone or even their own bone for use for cervical fusion. NASS advocacy staff and experts feel strongly that PEEK and titanium implants, which are FDA-approved, should be available to surgeons and to patients. The Cervical Spine Research Society (CSRS) liaison to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS), Dr. Trey Crawford, is also working with Drs. Luis M. Tumialán and Mike Wang from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS), Joint Spine Section (JSS), and the International Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery (ISASS) to provide a unified stance on the issue of providing access to patients who need cervical spinal fusion surgery. Another example involves coding. There have been recent percutaneous devices that have been developed and approved for stabilizing the cervical facet joints. While these minimally invasive devices might be very helpful to patients, they are not clinically equivalent to surgery to stabilize and instrument the cervical spine. NASS is collaborating with members of the Neurosurgery Washington Committee on the importance of using proper codes for surgery to instrument and stabilize the cervical spine, and not using these codes for percutaneous procedures that do not achieve the same goals and do not require the same amount of work. I am so proud of what NASS accomplishes for its members. The NASS staff and volunteers not only have worked tirelessly to advocate for spine professionals, but they also understand how important it is to collaborate with volunteers and staff at other spine societies including the AANS, ISASS, JSS, CSRS, and AAOS. As I said before, collaboration brings us together as spine professionals. Collaboration is necessary for providing excellent patient care. NASS will always continue to collaborate with other spine societies to provide evidence-based spine care to all Americans who can benefit.