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Secretary's Update November 2019As you will have seen in our recent "What you need to know", the ATA not only has its first woman as secretary, but also has its first ever female team of secretary and president. Martha Zeiger and I look forward to working together with our membership towards achieving ATA goals. We are excited to be moving forward with launching our strategic plan. Please take the time to review this plan which is posted for your feedback on the members only section of our website. The strategic plan has four focus areas (1) Clinical, scientific, and research excellence, 2) Primary thyroid health education and advocacy resource, 3) Operational, fiscal, and staffing excellence, and 4) Member diversity, growth, and engagement) and you have the opportunity to provide input on each of these areas. Thank you to those who have already provided input. We consider the plan to represent goals meaningful to all ATA members and primary audiences and therefore will make improvements to syntax and activities in response to the thoughtful feedback that we receive. We look forward to your active engagement and suggestions for how we can bring the plan to life. A special welcome to all our first-time committee members and our new trainee members: we are glad to have your contribution to the activities of the ATA. As committees continue this year's work, please integrate our strategic plan into all your activities. A special request to committee chairs, that as you connect with your board of director liaisons, please have the strategic plan in the forefront of your minds. As you have your committee discussions in December 2019 and in 2020, we will be seeking your ideas about how your particular committee can help us achieve our strategic plan goals. Your board of director liaisons will help convey your ideas and input to the board of directors. As you use the members-only section of our website, you will see that the ranks of our committees and task forces have swelled. In addition to three new guidelines task forces (Thyroid Cancer, Thyroid Nodules, and Pediatric Thyroid Nodules and Thyroid Cancer), we have 2 other new task forces. These are the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) task force and the Survey Evaluation task force. The DEI task force will be critical for working on one of the topic areas of our strategic plan (member diversity, growth, and engagement). Thank you to Regina Castro and Ernest Asamoah for heading this important committee. The other new task force will be reviewing all the numerous requests to survey our members and patient groups and will be streamlining and prioritizing these surveys. Thank you to Melanie Goldfarb and Joshua Klopper for co-chairing this task force. The new year, 2020, will be a "different" year for the ATA , as occurs every 5th year in the year of the International Thyroid Congress. In 2020 we will not have our typical fall annual meeting. We will have an exciting clinical meeting entitled "Controversies in Thyroidology" in New York City from May 28-May 30, 2020. Please make sure that you mark your calendars for this event. A course focusing on advanced and interventional ultrasound techniques is being planned as an additional event at the start of this meeting on May 28th. As we have done in the last few years, we will also have a satellite symposium covering Personalized Approaches to Thyroid Disorders at the Endocrine Society meeting in San Francisco on March 27, 2020. The International Thyroid Congress will be taking place in Xi'an, China from September 8-13th, 2020. The preliminary program looks very interesting, and worth the long travel to this meeting, as the event will be extremely rewarding, not only for the meeting's educational content, but also for the surrounding historic and cultural sights. As described above, the ATA usually has a smaller spring meeting every 5 years in the year that the International Thyroid Congress takes place. We are considering whether to change this model in the future by having our usual fall annual meeting in the year of the International Thyroid Congress (ITC) and to move the timing of the ITC to be in the spring 6 months prior to the ATA Annual Meeting. The motivation for considering this new model would be to continue to provide full engagement, educational opportunities, and a forum for discussing research for the majority of our members and trainees every year, including in the year of the International Thyroid Congress. We will be further describing the possible new model to our membership and asking for your input. So when you receive a survey about meeting structure in the year of the International Thyroid Congress (hopefully to be approved by the new Survey Evaluation task force!), please respond to this survey so that we receive your input and are attuned to your opinion. We anticipate this survey will be distributed next year. Happy Thanksgiving Holidays to all!
Jacquie Jonklaas, MD |
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