Report ASAP Kathleen M. Casey, President ASAP
Dear Colleagues and Friends I am excited to share the many wonderful things currently happening within ASAP and the ISS/SIC that have great potential to impact our mission to advance surgical and anesthesia care for the underserved around the world.
ISS/SIC and Global Surgery First - under Andrew Hill’s leadership as ISS/SIC President, the ISS/SIC is embracing global surgical care as central to its mission. This is obviously great news for all of us dedicated to this work. President Hill has been exploring a variety of partnerships with organizations in LMICs and will chair a special panel on the topic in Krakow, Poland which will nicely augment the strong program ASAP has put together for the 48th World Congress of Surgery WCS 2019. Second - several important updates to the ISS/SIC Constitution and Bylaws were unanimously passed at the “extraordinary General Assembly” of the ISS/SIC held during the American College of Surgeons’ annual Clinical Congress in Boston MA in late October. Going forward, the membership dues for ISS/SIC will be stratified according World Bank country income levels, with low income country members prorated at 25% of full dues; lower middle income country members at 50%; and upper middle income country members at 75%. In addition, dues for members under the age of 40 will be assessed at half the cost at each level, including in high income countries. This new dues structure will be active as of January 1, 2019. In addition, the updated Constitution now includes provisions for medical students
to become members. Lastly, there is clarification that all “persons and entities who identify themselves with the purpose and the objective of the Society may apply for membership,” inclusive of medical doctors and non-medical specialists . . . i.e., our nursing colleagues, global health coordinators, and others who have traditionally been part of the ASAP “family”.
dedic ated to childre n’s he alth and well-being, which presented some unique opportunities to remind others in the field of the critical importance of surgical and anesthesia care and discuss possibilities for collaboration across disciplines. Great thanks to ASAP Secretary Liz Drum for all of her many contributions to the success of this event.
Please spread the news widely on each of these advances in ISS/SIC membership policy, which can be reviewed online (http://iss-sic.com/files/iss_ sic_2019_constitution.pdf). Another positive development is that the ISS/SIC Administrative Office has been committed to improving the membership process, implementing an online application and a streamlining quicker approval notifications. We are hopeful that these proposed changes in dues structure will enable more of our colleagues from LMICs to join ISS/SIC and also hope to reengage many of our former associates who have previously been unable to formally join ISS/SIC.
ASAP is honored to have played a role in planning the upcoming 2018 COSECSA conference to be held in Kigali, Rwanda in early December. This year’s conference has dual themes – Surgical Infection and Global Surgery and will feature a panel sponsored by ASAP. In what we believe is a new element at a COSECSA meeting, ASAP has also facilitated a joint meeting of the Rwandan Anesthesia Society (RAS) within the COSECSA conference. Taking advantage of the synchronicity of ASAP Council member, Paulin Banguti currently serving as President of the RAS, ASAP will be contributing to the both the COSECSA and RAS programs. We are also thrilled to have the support of ISS/ SIC President Andrew Hill at these events and welcome the opportunity to showcase the work of ASAP and the ISS/SIC.
Over the coming months ASAP will be formally updating our Constitution and Bylaws so that they align with the revised ISS/SIC Constitution. We’ll formally vote to adopt these in Krakow next August and will share the proposed changes in advance to allow a comment period from the ASAP membership.
ASAP on the Agenda 2018 continues to be a particularly busy year for ASAP. We’ve just wrapped up our official annual meeting which was held in conjunction with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in the US. It was another successful conference with a strong faculty and plenty of opportunities to engage participants in dialog. We featured speakers from global surgery, anesthesia, obstetrics, and surgical nursing, representing the academic and research perspective, the NGO perspective, and the medical student and resident perspectives. Topics covered included global health ethics, educational partnerships and collaborations, best practices and challenges, pain management, innovations, and global health advocacy. In addition, we were able to network with the broader global health community
Over the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of being an invited speaker at the two largest international gatherings of medical students interested in surgical careers, the International Association of Student Surgical Societies (IASSS) conference in Bucharest, Romania and the International Student Surgical Network (InciSioN) conference in Leuven Belgium. I’m so energized by these two groups and look forward to welcoming members of both into the ISS/SIC in the coming year and particularly welcome the opportunity to collaborate with them on the future of global surgery. Among the many meetings each year that feature ASAP members speaking about Global Surgery, the General Surgeons Australia (GSA) meeting in Fiji in early October was particularly ASAPrich event, featuring our Past-Presidents Kelly McQueen and Steve Bickler, honorary Past-President David Watters, and current Vice-President, Russ Gruen as speakers.
December 2018
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