John C. Morris, M.D. ATA President

Welcome to the New Year in ATA!

I hope that everyone enjoyed the annual meeting in Denver as much as I did! It was a record setter, by all measures: Most attendees (1,314), members (418), non-members (359), associate members (284), abstracts (472), and exhibitors (33). Abstracts were received from 33 distinct countries, and 1/3 of all attendees were from outside the USA and Canada. Of course the most important event during the meeting is the scientific program, which was outstanding – congratulations to Stephanie Fish and Peter Arvan and the Program Committee Members for organizing such a terrifically successful agenda. Since 2007 we have pointed to the New York meeting as our record largest event – now we have a new gold standard – Denver 2016. Special thanks to Adonia Coates, our Director of Meetings and Program Services and the entire ATA office staff (Sharleene Cano, Kelly Hoff, Josette Paige, Danielle Waldman) led by Executive Director, Bobbi Smith, who work so diligently leading up to this climax of activity each year. As you might suspect, they are already back at work with planning for next year's event in Victoria, British Columbia. I am looking forward to breaking the new record there.

The governance year of the ATA ends with the annual meeting each fall and the new one begins immediately afterwards. However, the work of the incoming/new President begins in earnest several weeks or months before. Perhaps the most important job of the President-elect is to select the chairs and set the membership of our committees for the next governance year. The 23 committees and task forces accomplish much of the most important work of our organization and currently include around 300 persons -- members, Board liaisons, and ATA staff personnel. Each member serves on a committee for 3 years (usually), so that approximately one-third of the overall committee membership changes each year. Most committee chairs serve 2-3 year terms, so that nearly one-half of our committees will rotate new leadership each year. One exception of course is the Program Committee whose co-chairs change each year.

I invite you to spend a few minutes to review the list of our committees, their current chairs and membership, which is published on our web-site. It is quite an impressive document! Here, I wish to thank each of you who have accepted the request and are currently or have previously served on one or more of our committees. It is through the effort of each of you that ATA is able to accomplish the huge volume of work that is necessary to carry forward the entirety of our mission. For those who wish to become involved, there will be a call for volunteers next spring from our current President-elect, Charles Emerson, which he will use as he makes the appointments for 2017.

I wish to especially thank those who have accepted positions as new committee chairs this year, and to their predecessors who have served so diligently for the last 2-3 years: Alicia Algeciras-Schmnich, (Lab Services Committee, replacing Stefan Grebe); Catherine Dinauer (Membership Panel, replacing Heather Lochnan); Angela Leung and Mingzhao Xing (Program Committee, replacing Stephanie Fish and Peter Arvan); Carol Greenlee (Clinical Affairs, replacing Mona Sabra); Connie Trump and Charles Emerson (Development Committee, replacing Lisa Orloff); Megan Haymart (Finance & Audit Committee, replacing Ken Burman); Ernest Asamoah (Public Health Committee, replacing Angela Leung); Kepal Patel (Surgical Affairs replacing Ashok Shaha as co-chair with Maisie Shindo); and Keith Bible and Electron Kebebew (as co-chairs of the Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer Guidelines Task Force). This year's committee work is already underway for several of the groups, and will be starting very shortly for the remainder.

The ATA is planning a Spring symposium satellite once again to coincide with the Endocrine Society Annual Meeting in Orlando. It will be a half-day event on Friday afternoon, March 31, 2017 with a draft title "Hypothyroidism – Where are we now?". Jacquie Jonklaas and Tony Bianco, the chairs of the ATA guidelines taskforce on hypothyroidism will co-coordinate the program which will include additional task force members and invited speakers. The goal will be to provide an update on new and changing science on this most-common of thyroid function disorders subsequent to the release and publication of the guidelines in 2014. Please mark your calendars now to arrive a half-day early for the Endocrine Society meeting in order to attend this event.

Finally I wish to thank our outgoing President, Tony Bianco for his efforts and contributions on our behalf during his term. Tony is a strong leader and terrific scientist who has effectively led several initiatives within ATA. Perhaps the most visible of these is our new document regarding institutional conflict of interest that describes our source of funds and how we utilize them, in a transparent and publicly accessible manner on our website. Tony recognized the importance of this project and has worked closely with our treasurer, CFO, and office staff to produce this document, get it approved by the Board and posted for view. It will now be updated each year in order to keep it current.

As others have written here, the ATA Board is pursuing a number of goals that were the result of a strategic planning initiative held over the last couple of years. Four broad goals include: 1. Promote the visibility of the ATA as the global leader in thyroid health; 2. Establish the ATA as the patient‐preferred resource for education and information pertaining to thyroid disease; 3. Establish an integrative process that catalyzes innovative, meaningful and fundable thyroid research; 4. Increase financial resources to support and expand ATA programs. During the next year I hope to see each of these goals progress substantially. I wish to especially focus on the research initiative in order to assist our investigator members with advancing the science of thyroid disease. Over the next few months you will see several initiatives towards enhancing opportunities for research within our organization that will be pursued as part of this work.

Our ability to be successful here will require additional resources (i.e. dollars) which is included in item 4 above. We, i.e. the ATA, have recently engaged Just Write Solutions, LLC, for assistance in fund-raising. They will consult and guide us through developing a strategy and tactics for grant writing, marketing, and other fund-raising opportunities with broad-spectrum support of our development activities in an ongoing and sustained relationship. One example of their support is use of a proprietary "grants goldmine" to assist us with identifying sources of grants that we might seek for enhancing our patient interactions and education library, our trainee education programs, or for seeking funds to support establishment of data depositories or registries that could be utilized by ATA members in collaborative research projects. One of my goals for the next year is to help this collaboration mature and produce fruit that can be used to expand our society's efforts in the directions mapped out by the Board of Directors.

That's all for this month -- best fall wishes to everyone! Please include the ATA spring symposium mentioned above in your Endocrine Society Annual Meeting planning.

John Morris, MD
President, American Thyroid Association