I decided to do one last Presidential blog, this time from our Annual Scientific Meeting in Las Vegas. The courses over the weekend were great! For those of you who were not able to attend, the presentations will be loaded onto the ACG Education Universe in the not too distant future. The Annual Scientific Meeting is well underway with outstanding science and education.
It has truly been an honor and pleasure to serve as your president over the past year. We have been very active in 2016!
- We have worked hard this year to improve our advocacy and legislative affairs efforts. Dr. Costas Kefalas lead a task force, which will launch a series of changes to continue and expand our role in advocating for you on both the national and state stages.
- The ACG Education Universe is in the process of a major refresh and you will soon see the benefits of that hard work.
- The GIQuIC registry is an incredible collaboration between the ACG and ASGE. Dr. Irving Pike and his board continue to amaze me with the growth in both numbers of procedures and in usefulness of data from the system. This will only continue to both grow and mature.
- Our portfolio of publications is unmatched and includes: The American Journal of Gastroenterology (AJG), Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology (CTG) and the ACG Case Reports Journal. All are outstanding, all growing and complement each other very well.
- The ACG Institute is the preeminent source for clinical research funding in gastroenterology and supports our profession in many ways. We are working hard to make sure it has an adequate endowment to ensure continued and expanded support in the coming years.
These are just five of the hundreds of things the College has been working on and is doing for you.
In closing, I want to express my heartfelt appreciation to all of those who have answered the call to support our College through countless hours of service. Without our huge base of committee members, committee chairs, trustees, governors, fellows and members, we would be nothing.
If you are involved in the work of the College, I encourage you to continue your efforts, and if you are not, I urge you to consider ways you can become involved. I look forward to Dr. Carol Burke’s outstanding leadership. I know that she and the other future leaders of our College will achieve even greater things than I ever could have imagined.
Thank you for this most amazing opportunity. I look forward to continuing to serve the College anywhere and in any way I am needed.
Ken