IN MEMORIAM: e. Chester “Chip” Ridgway, Md
The Endocrine Society, its members, and the worlds of endocrinology research and education are mourning the loss of Endocrine Reviews editor-in-chief, E. Chester “Chip” Ridgway, MD, who lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on July 30. He was 72.
A Society past president (2003 – 2004), Ridgway was the senior associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Aurora. Prior to being named editor-in-chief of Endocrine Reviews in 2010, he was one of that journal’s associate editors for five years, and was on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism from 1984 to 1987. His work outside the pages of the Society’s journals was just as voluminous: He served on the Society’s Nominating Committee (1993 – 1995) and served one-year term as chairman; he was on the Council (1996 – 1999); the Awards Committee (2006); and chaired the Government Relations Committee from 2004 to 2008. He was also awarded the Society’s Women in Endocrinology Mentor Award in 2005 and the Robert H. Williams Distinguished Leadership Award in 2009.
“We were all saddened to hear about the recent passing of Chip Ridgway, one of the most stellar members of the Endocrine Society. We have lost a wonderful colleague,” says Society president Richard J. Santen, MD. “From the patients he treated and the young physicians and research assistants he mentored, to his groundbreaking thyroid research, Chip’s impact on the field of endocrinology and medicine is immeasurable. He will be greatly missed.”
Aside from his leadership role with the Society, Ridgway also served a term as president of the American Thyroid Association in 1996 and is the co-author of the book, Your Thyroid: A Home Reference. He was an expert in the study of the thyroid stimulating hormone and its regulation of the thyroid and had authored or co-authored more than 200 journal articles.
However, despite his role as one of the world’s leading thyroid researchers, Ridgway took great pride in the number of endocrine fellows he guided on their paths. By his own estimate, Ridgway trained more than 100 clinical endocrine fellows and more than 30 endocrine fellows in research throughout his career. These trainees are currently division heads, section heads, or members of academic endocrine departments, in addition to chairs of medicine and deans of medical schools.
“Chip was a wonderful mentor to so many endocrine trainees who began their careers in Colorado and within his division (the Division of Endocrinology, University of Colorado),” says Carol Lange, PhD, professor of medicine and pharmacology, Division of Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation, University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center in Minneapolis. “He always provided advice that was in one’s best interest and for the greater good. Sometimes this is really what one needed to hear, and not necessarily what one wanted to hear. His wisdom and his wit will be missed.”
Ridgway received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in 1964 and his MD degree from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 1968. Following his residency and fellowship at Harvard Medical School, he joined the faculty at Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital where he was head of the Thyroid Unit. In 1985 he was recruited back to the University of Colorado School of Medicine as the head of the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes, a position he held until 2007. In 1995, Ridgway was appointed senior associate dean for Academic Affairs within the School of Medicine. In 2006, he was appointed executive vice chair for the Department of Medicine and served as interim chair for the Department of Medicine during 2010. In November 2011, Ridgway was awarded the designation of Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado.
“It has been a tremendous privilege and gift to have known Chip Ridgway over these past 25 years as a mentor, as a colleague, and most importantly as a friend,” says Bryan R. Haugen, MD, professor of medicine and pathology, and head of the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes at the University of Colorado in Denver. “I am who I am because of Chip in so many ways. Not just as an endocrinologist, scientist, clinician, and administrator, but also as a husband, father, son, and friend. He taught me so much in that thoughtful and gently guiding way so many of us know. There are few people in this world who have so profoundly touched so many people, and Chip Ridgway is one of the rare ones. He will be deeply missed by so many.”
— Mark A. Newman
ENDO2015
Where Insight, Innovation, and Your Work Converge
At ENDO you can customize your experience by selecting from a host of sessions on a variety of topics in endocrinology. It’s also a great opportunity to present your original research to an international gathering of your peers.
Do it all at the first major endocrinology meeting of the year: ENDO 2015, coming March 5 through 8 to the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif.
Present Your Work, Advance Your Career
There are countless benefits to presenting your abstract at ENDO 2015, including: sharing your research and receiving valuable feedback from an international audience and connecting with potential mentors and training opportunities. Journalists see ENDO as a premier source of breaking research and exciting clinical trials in the field of endocrinology. More than 75 reporters covered ICE/ ENDO 2014, increasing the public’s understanding of hot topics in endocrinology.
Plenty to Discover at Plenary Sessions
Endocrinology experts from around the globe will converge to deliver their cutting-edge research and state-of-the-art clinical care during this year’s 16 plenary lectures. Exciting advances in the fields of obesity, diabetes, cancer, reproductive disorders, and signaling will be featured.
The Presidential Plenary on Thursday will provide new understandings of personalized menopause management. James Ingle, MD, of the Mayo Clinic will examine the roles of genetics in therapy responses, and public advocate and professor JoAnn Manson, MD, DrPH, will outline the biomarker data that informs today’s menopause management decisions.
New Offerings Stimulate Professional Improvement
ENDO 2015 will feature three new Clinical Practice Guideline sessions designed to improve individual practices and the profession at large. The sessions will focus on the latest guidance on adrenal insufficiency, menopause, and Cushing’s syndrome treatment.
Two Master Clinician sessions also promise to educate and enlighten, as clinicians and experts will evaluate challenging cases involving the diagnosis and management of pituitary tumors and neuroendocrine tumors.
Innovative Sessions, Unprecedented Access
This year’s lineup of new Meet the Professor sessions connect you to authorities on topics ranging from testosterone therapy to Paget’s disease to pediatric lipid disorders.
Next-generation sequencing tools and chronic kidney disease controversies are just two of more than 70 intriguing symposia spanning the spectrum of endocrinology and health. Check out the full scientific program to make the most of every minute, visit endo2015.org.
Get with the Programs — Starting Now
Registration for ENDO 2015 is now open! Visit endo2015.org to secure your spot at the earliest and best ENDO yet.
ENDOCRINE AND METABOLIC MEDICAL EMERGENCIES
Reunite a Student and Teacher at ICE/ENDO 2014
Not only were connections created amid the hustle and bustle of the
record-breaking ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago in June, but old
acquaintances were renewed.
One such renewal took place at the Endocrine Society’s booth in the middle of the exhibit hall at McCormick Place when Ming Li, MD, PhD, a fellow in endocrinology in the fellowship program of Diabetes and Endocrinology at the University of Minnesota ran across Glenn Matfin, MD, a consultant physician in the UK’s National Health Service and editor of Endocrine and Metabolic Medical Emergencies, the first book published by the Society’s own imprint, Endocrine Press.
Matfin had served as a preceptor in the fellows’ continuity clinic in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at the University of Minnesota where he saw endocrinology patients with Li, who says Matfin was “great with case-based teaching.”
As Matfin’s former student, Li says he was really proud seeing his mentor’s work on the shelf. “It is a great accomplishment on his part to not only have authored several outstanding chapters himself,” he says, “but also to have convened some of the greatest minds in endocrinology from all over the world to pass on their collective wisdom in this comprehensive volume.”
Li doesn’t just have accolades for Matfin; he also praises Endocrine and Metabolic Medical Emergencies from a fellow’s perspective, saying that as a comprehensive review of endocrinology emergencies, it not only provides many useful and practical algorithms and tips in clinical management of endocrinology emergencies, but also thoroughly discusses the pathophysiological bases of these conditions.
Specifically, Li says, the discussions for many of the topics are broad in scope and not limited to pure endocrinology, but also include other aspects of clinical medicine that are potentially affected by the particular condition discussed. “As we get used to the fact that endocrinology has more or less become a mostly outpatient practice, this volume gave us a timely reminder that we are physicians first, then endocrinologists,” he says. “And the patients should be treated as a diseased human being instead of an endocrine condition that was described in some text book.”
— Mark A. Newman
ICE/ENDO 2014 Research Generates Headlines
Research presented at ICE/ENDO 2014, the joint meeting of the Endocrine Society and the International Society of Endocrinology, was featured in the pages of prominent media outlets across the country and around the world.
To date, more than 1,700 separate articles and reports have covered ICE/ ENDO 2014. The meeting was highlighted in a number of top-tier outlets, including The Chicago Tribune, Scientific American, Nature, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The New York Daily News.
The Society hosted five news conferences on site featuring some of the most compelling and newsworthy findings presented at the meeting. More than 60 reporters participated in press conferences (both on site and via webcast) and registered to attend the meeting.
One of the hottest stories was a Reuters Health article about a new way to measure salivary cortisol levels using a smartphone and disposable test strip. The story was picked up by a variety of media outlets, including The Chicago Tribune and The New York Daily News. An abstract from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases examining how cold temperatures may activate brown fat also generated significant media coverage from outlets such as WebMD and The Daily Mail.
Other outlets that reported on ICE/ ENDO 2014 include: Huffington Post, Shape magazine, Prevention, Parents magazine, and U.S. News & World Report.
The news conferences, which were moderated by members of the Society’s Advocacy and Public Outreach Core Committee, can be viewed in their entirety online at www.endowebcasting.com.
Endocrine Society Urges
ABIM to Suspend New MOC Requirements
When the Internal Medicine Summit hosted by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) took place in Washington, D.C., in July, the Endocrine Society joined with 25 organizations representing nearly all internal medicine subspecialties in voicing concerns regarding ABIM’s Maintenance of Certifi cation (MOC) program.
While the Society supports the MOC system’s goals of continuous learning and improvement, its members have significant concerns with the unintended consequences of the new changes to the program.
The more stringent demands of MOC will likely diminish clinicians’ available time for patients and negatively impact the quality of care. Furthermore, clinicians engaging in other professional roles, like research, may be pushed out of clinical practice entirely, placing a burden on the endocrine workforce at a time of increasing patient need.
The Society and other attending subspecialty organizations were unanimous in their concerns about MOC regarding the unreasonable financial burden on physicians, the limited utility of the secure exam, and the desire for a broader scope of professional activities to be recognized within the MOC system.
In light of these and other concerns, the Society is urging ABIM to conduct a formal analysis of all possible unintended consequences of the new MOC requirements, with input from all professional societies and other stakeholders. During this process, the Society asks that the ABIM suspend its new MOC requirements.
The Society sent a letter to ABIM on June 5th highlighting its concerns and recommendations regarding the MOC program. The letter can be found at https:// www.endocrine.org/abim.
Endocrine Reviews Tops the “Endocrinology
and Metabolism” Journals List
In Thomson Reuters’ recently released annual Journal Citation Report (JCR) for 2013, Endocrine Reviews ranked first in Impact Factor among the 123 journals in the “Endocrinology & Metabolism” category.
A highly regarded metric used to measure a journal’s success, the 2013 Impact Factor is calculated by taking the number of citations made in 2013 to articles published in 2011 and 2012, and then dividing that number by the total number of articles published in 2011 and 2012.
Endocrine Reviews retained its ranking as the top journal in the field of Endocrinology & Metabolism, with an Impact Factor of 19.358 for 2013. The total number of citations received is another measure of success for journals tracked by the Journal Citation Report. The Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism ranked first in the number of citations received in 2013.
“We are thrilled that Endocrine Reviews has once more earned the highest Impact Factor in the category of Endocrinology & Metabolism,” says Margaret Shupnik, PhD, the Society’s Publications Core Committee Chair. “This great achievement would not be possible without the excellent work of our authors, reviewers, and editors.”
Endocrine Reviews publishes bimonthly comprehensive, authoritative, and timely review articles balancing both experimental and clinical endocrinology themes.
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