Wrapping Up
A Year Full of Milestones
One of the greatest privileges of my professional career has been serving as President of the Endocrine Society. As my term nears its end, I have the pleasure of looking back on a year of tremendous achievements, brought about through the support and tireless efforts of our members, volunteers, ofi cers, Council, and staTh
Throughout the year, I spoke about my goals as president and my vision to make the Society more visible to the public and policy makers, aid our members by providing valuable programs and resources and to make our field more viable, enabling our collective work to help the largest number of people. I am very pleased to say that we have met those objectives and continue moving forward with these goals in mind.
As a consequence of these goals, and in response to the environment, I have guided our Society through three major transitions this year – a new look, new leadership, and new location.
New Look
During the past year, the Society embarked on a branding initiative as we identified the need for an enhanced and cohesive Society brand. This exercise culminated with a new logo and tagline that were launched in January 2014. The goal was for the Society to tell its story in a meaningful, fresh, and cohesive way, making us more visible in an increasingly crowded professional world. Our logo is simple, modern, and vibrant and the new tagline, ‘hormone science to health’ embraces the breadth of our Society’s work in a simple and elegant statement of our mission. Our process was inclusive, involving input from Society members and staff, resulting in a new brand platform that creates momentum for our collective future.
New Leadership
In January 2014, our new Executive Director and CEO, Barbara Byrd Keenan, joined the Society. As you all know, Scott Hunt, the Society’s Executive Director and CEO, retired at the end of 2013, after leading the Society for 25 years. With Barbara’s leadership and energy, the Society will continue to lead the world of endocrinology ensuring that member value is always at the forefront of our work.
New Location
In February 2014, the Society headquarters moved from Chevy Chase, Maryland to downtown Washington, D.C. The move to the new location enables our Society to continue to be a vibrant leader, and allows us to better pursue our mission. Our membership is growing; our contributions to the scientific and policy conversations are significant. There is no better place to advance the Society’s comprehensive advocacy agenda than Washington, D.C. This new physical space ensures we are viable into the future and was a bold move for a Society that is itself on the move!
In addition to these changes, we’ve created tremendous member value through program enhancements, which I’ll briefly summarize now:
Advocacy and Outreach
Our Society continues to expand its efforts and increase its visibility and effectiveness in advocacy. We launched on-line grassroots advocacy campaigns and hosted Researcher and Clinician Hill Days focused on biomedical research funding and diabetes and obesity prevention legislation in addition to physician payment issues. I am very grateful to members who participated by writing to their congressional representatives or advocating in person on Capitol Hill. We’ve also been active abroad with Endocrine Society members working in the EU on a comprehensive endocrine-disrupting compound policy. These efforts have increased the visibility of endocrinology as a field and made the case for endocrinologists as leaders in improving global health.
The Society’s media outreach in 2013 garnered record-breaking coverage. Specifically, coverage of ENDO 2013 was the highest ever with more than 2,490 independent news stories surpassing last year’s record 2,232 stories; coverage of journal/research-related news resulted in more than 4,000 separate news stories; and coverage of the Society (overall) has once again surpassed previous years with 4,386 news stories. Earlier this year, we held the Science Writers Conference in New York. This is an exciting event just for reporters to communicate the frontier of endocrine research, clear up misconceptions about hormones and the endocrine system, and educate science and health writers on the fundamentals of endocrinology. Twenty reporters attended this year’s event representing outlets such as The New York Times, Shape Magazine, Medscape, MedPage Today, and Everyday Health. The presentations were excellent and I was impressed by the reporters who asked insightful questions and as a consequence wrote good stories about hormone health. The press helps tell our story; ensuring that they understand our field and know the thought leaders in endocrine health is an important part of the Society’s work.
Educational Programs and
Trainee Activities
I would like to thank the Annual Meeting Steering Committee (AMSC), including the eight members of the Program Organizing Committee from the International Society of Endocrinology, for planning an exciting program for ICE/ENDO 2014. Under the excellent leadership of the AMSC chairs Derek Leroith, Kevin Grove, Matthew Ringel, and Carol Wysham, AMSC has created a scientific program that showcases the most cutting edge research and clinical practice and features international perspectives on the practice of endocrinology. The strength of the program resulted in our highest abstract submission numbers ever, ensuring that this meeting will provide the most cutting edge work in our field.
The Society’s international outreach continues to grow. The second year of the Ambassador Exchange Program began this spring with U.S. participants visiting centers in Moscow, Russia and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. The international participants will be visiting centers in Denver and Chicago in June, finalizing their visit by attending the ICE/ENDO meeting.
The Highlights of Endo programs, which are organized in conjunction with local endocrine organizations, were held in Russia, China, and Mexico in 2013 and South Korea, Brazil, and Argentina in 2014. Other very successful international collaborations include the Endo-Bridge program in Turkey, and the 1st International Clinical Update in Endocrinology in Hyderabad, India, which was a group effort with the Endocrine Society of India, International Society of Endocrinology, and Society for Endocrinology.
The Society’s portfolio of educational products continues to grow with new modules for Maintenance of Certification and the ESAP In-Training Exam, which continue to set new attendance records each year. The Clinical Endocrinology Update (CEU) and the Board Review had record-breaking attendance in the past two years. Additionally, new regional programs were developed this year targeting endocrinologists and primary care physicians. Six programs were presented in six cities throughout the U.S.
Trainee activities are particularly important; they ensure the vitality of our discipline for the future and here we were very successful. In 2013 the Trainee and Career Development Committee launched the EndoCareers brand, integrating all trainee and early career programming under this umbrella. These highly successful programs include the Early Career Forum and Career Development Workshops at ENDO, Early Investigators Workshop, Future Leaders Advancing Research in Endocrinology, the International Scholars Program, and the Minority Access Program, as well as multiple awards to meet the needs of both basic and clinical trainees and early career professionals at different stages of their training.
Publications
Along with the many changes the Endocrine Society has gone through recently, the Society’s publications department has begun a massive retooling of its online presence. The Society has migrated its journals to a comprehensive e-Publishing platform specifically created for professional and scholarly publishers. The new platform allows easy access to content across all of the Society’s journals and e-books, and more seamlessly to the Society’s other web properties. Many more features will be available in the coming months.
Hormone Health Network
The Hormone Health Network held several new and unique events last year at ENDO: two Networksponsored sessions featuring an expert in patient engagement and self-management support; several presentations for type 2 diabetes patients on lifestyle interventions such as nutrition and exercise, stress management, and patient-provider communication.
HHN’s redesigned website has improved navigation for the Network’s more than 100 patient resources, now allowing the content to be search-engine optimized to significantly increase traffic to the site.
A refreshed Menopause Map has been launched that improves the interactive experience for users of this tool. More patient and provider resources are on their way.
Visible, valuable, viable – words that have helped
us achieve a great deal together.
I would like to recognize the outstanding leaders that I have had the honor to work with this past year, especially Immediate Past President Bill Young and Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hupart, as well as PresidentElect Richard Santen, our officers and Council, and my colleagues serving on committees. Finally, I want to recognize the outstanding support from our entire staff. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as your President and I look forward to helping our Society in other ways in the future.
Teresa K. Woodruff, PhD
President,
Endocrine Society
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