Secretary's Update - December 2012

Season's greetings to all! It is a busy time of year for everyone, including the ATA. Now that our annual meeting is behind us and the committee chairs and members for the next year are in place, the work of the committees and task forces is underway. Many of the committees have had conference calls in the past couple of weeks and many more have them scheduled for the next few weeks as the broad activities of the ATA are pursued. ATA has 321 named members serving on 19 standing committees and 10 active task forces. Each committee and task force also includes an ATA board of director liaison and a staff liaison. The engagement of a very large proportion of our membership is key to what makes the ATA relevant and responsive to current events in thyroidology. The process of involvement in ATA activities and representation by all constituencies is the essence of the ATA and is tremendously important to all that we do. Thanks to all of you who are serving the ATA in this way.

You can find the current committee list under 'About the ATA' at www.thyroid.org. The largest of our committees is the Program Committee which is tasked with setting the program for our annual meeting. This year the co-chairs are Julie Ann Sosa and Ronald Koenig. Julie Ann, Ron and their committee members are already well into the planning process for the Puerto Rico meeting and are actively seeking suggestions for topics and program ideas to include in their deliberations. If you have ideas to suggest please bring them forward (with names of proposed speakers) to any committee member, Julie Ann, or Ron (cc or send to bsmith@thyroid.org). They will be making decisions on symposia topics in the next few weeks.

To continue the meeting discussion, the final numbers indicate that our annual meeting in September in Quebec City was one for the record books. 1119 people registered for this year's meeting, which is second only to the 2007 annual meeting in New York City when 1313 attended. The number of abstracts submitted and presented was an all-time high at 287. 28% of those who attended were from 36 countries outside North America. As I have written previously in this newsletter, our demographics are changing substantially and this was also seen at the annual meeting, 45% of attendees were female, and 12% were surgeons. We should all express our appreciation to last year's program committee, which was chaired by Elizabeth Pearce and Douglas Forrest, and the members of the ATA staff, especially our head meeting planner Adonia Coates, for the tremendous success of this, our most important, event.

Over the last few weeks, two new guidelines from ATA have been published, both in THYROID. Firstly, the "American Thyroid Association Guidelines for Management of Patients with Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer", chaired by Bob Smallridge, which are found in the November issue of THYROID, are the first guidelines to be developed for this devastating disease. They are unique in many ways, including that they contain a substantial component of ethical and end-of-life content, which is tremendously important in providing high quality care to these patients. Published in the December issue of THYROID, the "Clinical Practice Guidelines for Hypothyroidism in Adults: Cosponsored by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American Thyroid Association", as the title implies, was a joint effort between ATA and AACE led by Jeff Garber. The major updates of the 1995 ATA guidelines on both hyper- and hypothyroidism are now current and provide the state-of-the-art for diagnosis and management of these most common of thyroid disorders. Please join me in congratulating the members of these two task forces on completion of this important work. The two documents add to the ATA library of guideline publications that set the standard for thyroid disorder diagnosis and management worldwide. See www.thyroidguidelines.net for the complete archive of guidelines and consensus statements. Guideline and consensus statement topics currently being developed and considered include Basic Science Research, Medullary Thyroid Cancer, Thyroid Hormone Replacement and Use of Thyroid Hormone Analogues; Thyroid Nodules and Differentiated Thyroid Cancer (DTC); Pediatric Thyroid Cancer, Outpatient thyroidectomy, Airways/Goiter Management , Pre–operative Imaging for Thyroid Cancer Surgery and Surgery for Recurrent/Persistent DTC.

The updated and finalized version of the ATA strategic plan is now posted on the members-only section of our website for your reference. One of the more visible action items is Challenge 2 under the first of 4 focus areas, "strengthen appeal to basic scientists". Sheue-yann Cheng has recently chaired the first meeting of the new Research Affairs Task Force which is charged with recommending actions to confront this challenge. You will hear more from this task force as its deliberations progress to recommendations and the Board moves and considers implementation over the next several months.

Another of the areas of strategic focus outlined in our plan centers around employing new and wider ranges of communication with our members, including social media. Bobbi Smith and the ATA office, especially Sharleene Cano, are working with an advisor, Noel Kopp, to bring these items forward. One of the first adventurers into social media among us is Alan Farwell who has been "tweeting" ATA and thyroid-related items for several months (@thyroidfriends). Alan is the chair of the Patient Education and Advocacy Committee and also editor of Clinical Thyroidology for Patients. We anticipate many more forays into social media as we better understand how these media vehicles work and can be applied to advance the causes of the ATA. We are looking forward to seeing many of you at our spring symposium and research summit on hypothyroidism in Washington, DC on April 25-26, 2013 organized by Jacqueline Jonklaas, Ken Burman and Tony Bianco -- details are available at Thyroid.org. This 1 1/2 day meeting promises to be an important opportunity to discuss new developments in both basic and clinical thyroidology in the treatment of hypothyroidism. It will also give you a chance to speak with Board members and express your views on the ATA governance process in a venue more favorable to conversation than our large annual meeting provides.

I hope each of you has the happiest of holiday seasons. See you next year.

John Morris, MD
Secretary/Chief Operating Officer