About ACG

• Mission
• ACG President
• Board of Trustees
• ACG Past Presidents
• Past Chairs ACG Board of Governors
• ACG Headquarters
• 75th Anniversary Book
• ACG Website Privacy Policy

More than 12,000 physicians from 86 countries are members of the ACG. Through annual scientific meetings, The American Journal of Gastroenterology, regional postgraduate training courses and research grants, the ACG provides its members with the most accurate and up-to-date scientific information on digestive health and the etiology, symptomatology and treatment of GI disorders. ACG’s advocacy in the public policy arenas, and the work of the ACG’s 22 committees have made tremendous strides with many premiere accomplishments to improve the future of clinical gastroenterology and the quality of care available to patients with GI conditions and diseases, today. The information exchange and training acquired through College membership provide physicians with the knowledge necessary to offer the most effective patient care and to meet the challenges of today’s changing health care system. For more information about becoming a member, click here.

Mission

The mission of the American College of Gastroenterology shall be to advance the medical treatment and scientific study of gastrointestinal disorders. The College will strive to serve the evolving needs of physicians in the delivery of high quality scientific, humanistic, clinical, ethical, and cost-effective health care to gastroenterology patients.

Our goals are:

1. To provide continuing medical education to clinicians through scientific publications, meetings, and multimedia, web-based offerings;
2. To represent the clinician in national and local health care policy issues to ensure that the best interests of patient care and clinical medicine are served;
3. To promote and provide assistance in education to clinical gastroenterologists and fellows-in-training in cost-effective, efficient, and high quality practice management;
4. To promote, encourage and support clinical research in gastroenterologic disorders through the ACG Institute for Clinical Research;
5. To be a source of educational information for patients with gastrointestinal disorders and their families and to provide liaison with patient advocacy organizations for those with gastrointestinal and hepatic disorders.

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2012-2013 ACG President

Ronald J. Vender, MD, FACG

Dr. Vender received his B.A. from Harvard College and his medical degree from Yale School of Medicine. He completed his residency training and gastroenterology fellowship at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Currently Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at Yale School of Medicine, since 2008, Dr. Vender also serves as Chief Medical Officer of the Yale Medical Group, one of the country’s largest academic group practices, providing specialty care in more than 100 medical areas. Prior to joining the Yale faculty, Dr. Vender was chief of gastroenterology at the Hospital of St. Raphael for seventeen years, associate director of the Yale GI Fellowship Program, and co-founder and managing partner of Gastroenterology Center of Connecticut. This year Dr. Vender delivered the Yale Dillard Lecture, entitled “The Effective Clinician” and has addressed other medical audiences on The Effective Consultant, Negotiating for Your Academic Needs, and the Impact of Healthcare Reform on GI.

An active and dedicated contributor to the life of the College, Dr. Vender is a Fellow of the ACG and served as ACG Governor for the State of Connecticut from 1996 to 2002. He received the William D. Carey Award in 2003 for his distinguished service to the College as Governor. He chaired the ACG National Affairs Committee from 2001 to 2004 with primary responsibility for the College’s public policy initiatives and legislative agenda, and continues to serve on this committee.

Dr. Vender is a Fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. The AGA honored Dr. Vender with the Distinguished Clinician Award in 2008, and Yale School of Medicine recognized his contributions as an outstanding teacher with the Vincent DeLuca Award in both 2002 and 2006.

Dr. Vender’s service to the College and clinical practice experience gives him a unique perspective on the current landscape in gastroenterology. “My career experiences have served as wonderful preparation for leading an organization dedicated to meeting the needs of clinical gastroenterology. I joined a small private practice right out of fellowship training and spent the next 26 years as a private doctor with many roles: chief of GI at a 90-bed community hospital, chief of GI at a 512-bed community teaching hospital; program director of a GI fellowship training program; co-founder and managing partner of a 14-doctor and 7-PA GI group and co-founder of the first privately-owned ACS in Connecticut. The unusual part of the career was to go back into academics as the CMO of a 900-physician academic medical group,” said Dr. Vender.

For Dr. Vender, the lessons of the 90-bed hospital and the 1,000-bed hospital underscore all that physicians have in common, regardless of practice setting, “We are all clinicians. We need continuing education to maintain and improve our skills. We need assistance with the management of our practices, with the economics of healthcare and with our political and regulatory systems. We depend on equipment and medications that improve over time, on national guidelines to help us assimilate this knowledge into our best practices, and we need tools to measure and monitor our performance. That is what the ACG is committed to,” he added.

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2012-2013 Board of Trustees

Officers

President

Ronald J. Vender, MD, FACG
Professor of Internal Medicine
Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs
Chief Medical Officer for Yale Medical Group
Medical Director, Yale CME
Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, CT

President-Elect

Harry E. Sarles, Jr., MD, FACG
Founding Partner, Digestive Health Associates of Texas
Rockwall, TX

Vice President

Stephen B. Hanauer, MD, FACG
The Joseph B. Kirsner Professor of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology
Chief, Section of Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
University of Chicago Medical Center
Chicago, IL

Secretary

Carol A. Burke, MD, FACG
Director, Center for Colon Polyp and Cancer Prevention
Head, Section of Polyposis, Sanford R. Weiss, MD Center for Hereditary Colorectal Neoplasia
Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Colorectal Surgery and Taussig Cancer Insitute
Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland, OH

Treasurer

Kenneth R. DeVault, MD, FACG
Professor of Medicine
Chair, Department of Medicine
Mayo Clinic
Jacksonville, FL

Immediate Past President

Lawrence R. Schiller, MD, FACG
Clinical Professor, UT Southwestern, Dallas
Program Director, Gastroenterology Fellowship, Baylor University Medical Center
Chairman, Institutional Review Board for Human Subject Protection, Baylor University Medical Center
Dallas, TX

Past President

Delbert L. Chumley, MD, FACG
Partner, Gastroenterology Consultants of San Antonio
San Antonio, TX

Director, ACG Institute

Edgar Achkar, MD, MACG
Consultant, Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland, OH

Chair, Board of Governors

Daniel J. Pambianco, MD, FACG
Charlottesville Gastroenterology Associates
Director of Endoscopy at Martha Jefferson Hospital
Charlottesville, VA

Vice Chair, Board of Governors

Immanuel K. H. Ho, MD, FACG
Chief, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Director of Endoscopy Center, Crozer-Chester Medical Center
Clinical Professor of Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine
Chester, Pennsylvania

Trustee for Administrative Affairs

John W. Popp, Jr., MD, MACG
Medical Director, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Columbia, SC

Co-Editor, AJG

William D. Chey, MD, FACG
Professor of Medicine
H. Marvin Pollard Institute Scholar
Director, GI Physiology Laboratory
Co-Director, Michigan Bowel Control Program
University of Michigan Health System
Ann Arbor, MI

Co-Editor, AJG

Paul Moayyedi, MD, FACG
Professor, Department of Medicine
Director, Division of Gastroenterology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Trustees

Neena S. Abraham, MD, FACG
Consultant Gastroenterologist
Mayo Clinic
Scottsdale, AZ

R. Bruce Cameron, MD, FACG
Clinical Professor
CWRU School of Medicine
Cleveland, OH

Naga P. Chalasani, MD, FACG
Professor of Medicine and Cellular & Integrative Physiology
Director, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Indiana University School of Medicine
Indianapolis, IN

Francis A. Farraye, MD, MSc, FACG
Clinical Director, Section of Gastroenterology, Boston Medical Center
Professor of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine
Boston, MA

David A. Greenwald, MD, FACG
GI Fellowship Training Director, Montefiore Medical Center
Professor of Clinical Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Bronx, NY

Sunanda V. Kane, MD, MSPH, FACG
Professor of Medicine and Chair of Quality
Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, MN

Irving M. Pike, MD, FACG
Chief Medical Officer
John Muir Health
Walnut Creek, CA

Mark B. Pochapin, MD, FACG
Director, Division of Gastroenterology
NYU Langone Medical Center
New York, NY

Nicholas J. Shaheen, MD, FACG
Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology
Director, Center for Esophageal Diseases and Swallowing
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Chapel Hill, NC

Scott M. Tenner, MD, MPH, FACG
Director, Medical Education and Research
Division of Gastroenterology
Maimonides Medical Center
Associate Professor at State University of New York
Brooklyn, NY

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ACG Headquarters

During the first week of February 2005, the American College of Gastroenterology moved into its new national headquarters building located in Bethesda, Maryland. In recognition of the continued outstanding growth in membership and programming, the move is designed to permit the College’s administrative staff to better serve the needs of the organization and its members. The new space provides a significant upgrade in the amount of work-space and will permit the College to meet its administrative staffing needs for the foreseeable future.

The move to increase administrative capacity is an outgrowth of the review of the College’s capabilities and resources that began in 2001 with then President Edgar Achkar’s appointment of a strategic planning committee and culminated with the ratification of the ACG Strategic Plan in 2002. The College’s Board of Trustees believes all members will benefit from an increased level of service and new and exciting programs that build on the ACG’s unique role as champion of clinical gastroenterology.

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75th Anniversary Book

American College of Gastroenterology 1932 – 2007
Seventy-Five Years of Commitment to Clinical Gastroenterology, Gastroenterologists and Patient Health

ACG marked its 75th Anniversary in 2007 and to celebrate our anniversary, we published a book that highlights our history. There is a long list of individuals, members past and present, who contributed to the publication, compiling ACG’s history and various milestones throughout our 75 years. ACG thanks all those individuals who contributed their time to see this book come to fruition. In addition, the Archives Committee put so much of their time into developing this book as well and ACG wishes to recognize the ACG Archive Committee members:

Kevin W. Olden, MD, FACG, Chair
James L. Achord, MD, MACG
V. Alin Botoman, MD, FACG
Mitchell S. Cappell, MD, FACG
Robert E. Kravetz, MD, MACG
Myron Lewis, MD, MACG
Arvey I. Rogers, MD, MACG
Sidney Winawer, MD, MACG
Alvin Zfass, MD, MACG

Committee members want to personally recognize the late Albert C. Svoboda, MD, MACG, who prior to his passing, dedicated a great deal of his time to see this project come to fruition. A special acknowledgement of Dr. Svoboda is included in the book.

PDFs of each chapter may be found below:

Table of Contents, Dedication, Foreword, Acknowledgements and Timeline

Chapter 1: The Founding and the Early Years, 1932 – 1954
Chapter 2: Growth and Maturity
Chapter 3: Making an Impact
Chapter 4: The College Focuses on Practitioners, Public Education, and Practice
Chapter 5: A Decade of Progress (1997 – 2007)
Chapter 6: Winds of Change: Challenging Issues
Chapter 7: Yesterdays, Today, and Tomorrows: Recollections, Reflections, and perspectives from Past Presidents
Chapter 8: Awards and Lectures
Appendices
Index

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