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Elizabeth N. Pearce, MD, MSc
President, American Thyroid Association |
President's Update
April 2019
Greetings from gray and cloudy Boston! We have been getting more than enough April showers here and are hoping that the sun re-emerges at some point.
I am delighted to announce that Electron Kebebew has accepted the position of the next Editor in Chief of Thyroid®. He is currently Chief of General Surgery at Stanford University and previously led the endocrine oncology branch at the National Cancer Institute. He is also a long-time ATA member who has co-chaired the upcoming ATA Anaplastic Cancer guideline and has served as an Associate Editor at Thyroid® since 2012. He will take over responsibility from current Editor in Chief Peter Kopp as of the January 2020 journal issue.
The ATA leadership, staff, and many members will be attending a strategic planning meeting in Phoenix at the end of the month. With the assistance of a professional facilitator, we will use the time to develop a vision for the organization in coming years, to update our formal mission and vision statements, and to develop both short- and long-term strategies for implementing our goals. It is hoped that the meeting will form the basis of new work plans to be implemented as we transition to the leadership of Secretary-Elect Jacqueline Jonklaas over the next year.
Work has already begun on a revised ATA adult Differentiated Thyroid Cancer Guideline, co-chaired by Matt Ringel and Julie Ann Sosa. In the interest of making the guideline-writing process more manageable, the previously very large nodules and cancer guideline is being separated into two entities. The Guidelines and Statements Committee is currently working to put in place a separate task force to revise the Thyroid Nodules Guideline.
If you have not reviewed the patient education materials lately on the ATA website, please have a look to familiarize yourself with the content. The adult and pediatric patient brochures on a large number of clinical topics are regularly updated and are, in most cases, available in both English and Spanish. The ATA journal Clinical Thyroidology® for the Public, led by Editor-in-Chief Alan Farwell, is available at https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/ct-for-patients/. This monthly publication renders articles from Clinical Thyroidology® in jargon-free language and is a superb resource for patients and their families.
As a reminder, in 2019 we hope to achieve full funding of the Ridgway Legacy endowment, which supports the annual trainee conference at the annual meeting. Paul Ladenson, Leonard Wartofsky, and Michael McDermott have generously offered a matching challenge and will each match $3,000 of member donations to bring the Ridgway endowment to goal. Please consider making your own donation at https://www.thyroid.org/donate/.
Finally, the abstract submission site for the 2019 annual meeting (to be held in Chicago October 30-November 3) is now open; regular call abstracts are due by June 19. Meeting registration should be available later this month.
President, American Thyroid Association
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