We examine the American Headache Society (AHS) First Contact Program website metrics to assess the program’s reach and provide direction for future initiatives. 

There is a shortage of headache specialists in the United States. The First Contact Program was created to help minimize the impact of the shortage by providing headache-related education to primary care providers. This is the first study to assess the reach of the program and critically examine how its resources can be used to aid those in underserved areas in order to better meet the needs of clinicians and patients.

We examined the First Contact Program website metrics from October 2020–June 2023 and program data from May 2020–October 2023.

The First Contact Program homepage was the second most visited page on the AHS website (>100,000 views). The most viewed Topic Pages were Diagnosing Migraine, Acute Treatment, Preventive Treatment, Lifestyle Changes, and Migraine in the Elderly (>30,000 views). Fifteen podcast episodes were created for the program (>3,500 plays). The most played episodes were Treating and Preventing Migraine, Headache Management over Telemedicine and Behavioral Treatment for Migraine. The First Contact Program held 93 events (68 grand rounds, 21 state-level, 4 national meetings) reaching >6,000 clinicians. The grand rounds spanned across 23 states and Washington D.C., while the state-level symposia were held across 12. Twenty-seven (30.33%) First Contact Program events occurred in states with few headache subspecialists or low headache subspecialist densities. Only five of the 17 patient guides are available in Spanish.

Now that educational content on headache medicine has been developed and delivered, future work may examine where the First Contact Program might focus initiatives based on “desert” areas for headache care and racial and ethnic disparities in headache care to further improve access to providers familiar with headache care.