Fall 2018 – President’s Corner

Dear colleagues,

Hello and happy fall! I hope that everyone had an enjoyable summer! First, I want to thank everyone for the overwhelming response that we received for the member survey. We had a record 179 responses. The executive committee has heard your feedback and we are planning some exciting changes for the upcoming year.

One issue that has emerged is members’ desire to continue to engage with each other throughout the year. We are excited to announce that in collaboration with the Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER), we will be hosting an online debate on a hot topic in the area of methods. We will be announcing the details soon; so, stay tuned. Next, in collaboration with Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, we will be hosting a student-led online journal club. If you are a student or trainee interested in getting involved in this effort, please reach out to me. We will be soliciting ideas for a paper to discuss shortly.

I’m particularly excited to share our plan to increase member involvement in the planning of our annual meeting. In addition to our regular call for abstracts, we will be inviting the membership to propose/host sessions. We will also be forming a program committee who will work closely with the president to plan and select content for the meeting. The committee is expected to include several past presidents, the president elect, the student representative, as well as a handful of members from the society at large. We will be releasing a call for nominations to this committee (self-nominations welcomed) in the coming weeks.

In addition to the program committee, we will be launching a communications committee. The charge of this committee, chaired by one of our members-at-large, will be to manage and generate content for the society’s social media accounts. The executive committee believes that member engagement is key to maintaining the vibrancy of our group. We are eager to see what this committee can do to pull us together virtually in between meetings. Again, we will be releasing a call for nominations to this committee in the coming weeks.

I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to serve as your president and am looking forward to an exciting year. Should you have any questions, concerns, or ideas, please send me a note at courtney.lynch@osumc.edu.

All the best,

Courtney Lynch