Message from the President

Priorities for the BSACI

Professor Graham Roberts

President It doesn’t seem very long ago that you elected me as president of the society. I’ve had a very steep learning curve as President Elect, learning how everything works! It was great to see everyone at the Harrogate meeting and thanks to George Gkimpas and the programme committee for putting together such a successful programme. It was particularly good to see an allergy education and diversity session. The BSACI has shown how to safely run a face to face meeting during a

pandemic.

We all thank Adam Fox for his excellent three years as President. He has provided first class leadership during the challenges of this pandemic ensuring that the BSACI has played an important role in delivering the medical response.

I would also like to thank Nicola Brathwaite for her term as Secretary of the society. In particular for her work modernising the committee structure, this places the society in a very good place to navigate what’s likely to be another few challenging years.

The pandemic continues to deliver challenges for allergy, particularly as it’s not being prioritised in the recovery program. Raised patients expectations combined with longer waiting times are far from ideal. As a profession, we haven’t had as much impact on NHS policies as we’d like. With the recent National Allergy Service Group (NASG) report, we have an opportunity to engage Government in a dialogue. It’s going to be critical to frame allergy within the current NHS policy framework with its emphasis on working with community teams.

One of the few positives of the pandemic has been the use of virtual technology to widen participation in the society. The grand rounds have been particularly successful with over 100 members accessing each. Committee meetings have been virtual and this may have helped our long-held goal of diversifying the leadership team. None of the new Council members are from the South East and our new Secretary, Deb Marriage, is from Bristol.

As the country returns to normal, there’s going to be considerable competition for resources to restore and improve services. It’s critical that the BSACI works with our patient partners to keep allergy in the minds of policymakers. We need to look after ourselves in these difficult times and be supportive to one another. We also need to work to restore the allergy clinical trials work which has been markedly affected by the pandemic.

When I campaigned to be President of the society I highlighted three priorities. The first is to support the membership with new ways of delivering allergy services.

The second is to join with other stakeholders to ensure allergy features in the NHS long-term plan. The NASG report is a good starting place for these first priorities, however we have a lot more work to do.

The third priority is to broaden participation in BSACI activities. To that end we plan a mixture of virtual and face-to-face meetings in the future. This should ensure that the BSACI remains as accessible for everyone as your society was during the pandemic and ensure that we have participation from colleagues from all four home nations.

I would like to add one further personal priority - transition care for adolescents moving towards adulthood. With a number of colleagues, we have put together a European blueprint to deliver successful transition. I look forward to working with colleagues from across the society to translate this into a UK context.

Finally I need to mention our 2022 annual meeting. Instead of our usual October meeting, we are going to have it six months earlier in April. This is because the meeting will be held jointly with the World Allergy Organization. We’ve used this

As the country returns to normal, there’s going to be considerable competition for resources to restore and improve services. It’s critical that the BSACI works with our patient partners to keep allergy in the minds of policymakers.

opportunity to move the meeting to Edinburgh for 2022. This will provide a great backdrop to what is likely to be one of the few large face-toface international allergy meetings in 2022. I look forward to seeing you there!