An update from the ESE President - April 2023
Dear ESE Members,
As I begin my final month of my Presidency of ESE I am reflecting back on the previous two years. It has been a great honor to lead this organisation, and I will be sad to leave this role but pleased to hand it over into the safe hands of Jérôme Bertherat, who has been shadowing me in the role of President-Elect – and I know he will do a wonderful job!
During the last two years I have worked with our Executive Committee, other ESE committees and many of our members on a number of activities. The first major activity was the strategic review which established clearly our strategy for 2022-26 under the four pillars:
- To UNITE and REPRESENT the European endocrine community and be acknowledged as the reference point for endocrine health and science.
- To SUPPORT our members in education, clinical practice and research.
- To further ADVANCE the science and clinical care of endocrinology.
- To reinforce ESE as a leading society which is SUSTAINABLE, TRUSTED AND VALUED
We are working on behalf of the entire endocrine community in Europe and beyond within these pillars and I am delighted with the progress so far. I highlight just a few activities here.
In 2022 we launched the first European Hormone Day, with the objective of bringing together the endocrine community to raise awareness of the importance of good hormone health – including members, national and pan-European societies, patient advocacy groups and industry. As part of this we developed the Milano Declaration which had 60 organisational endorsements and 11 MEP endorsements. The second edition is planned this year on 15 May, with many new materials available, please mark your calendar and review the details on www.europeanhormoneday.org!
Our educational programme has hugely increased over the last few years, with the introduction of a number of new online as well as face-to-face educational sessions. These include the successful Spotlight on Science webinars, which is a series of informal online evening masterclass sessions to discuss scientific research topics in endocrinology. These are always very well attended. As a researcher it was extremely important to me to support basic scientists and I am pleased to see how this developed during my Presidency – this is one example. In addition, our beloved Summer School was reintroduced and held in Austria after a couple of years break due to the pandemic. We introduced a series of PhD grants to support attendance and I understand a great time was had by all! We have also commenced the Endocrine Research Roadmap project, whichhttps://email-ese-hormones.org/52TW-QDMS-9XL6Z-KR89X-1/c.aspx is a collaborative effort to identify specific research needs and opportunities in areas of endocrine health and disease. The project aims to outline research and clinical research priorities that will contribute to better health in Europe – a hugely important project.
In addition, I have been working on an initiative for our mid-career members – the ESE Leadership Academy. The vision for the programme is to foster future leaders in endocrinology and help equip mid-career endocrine clinicians, scientists, nurses and allied health professionals with skills in leadership, general governance of a society, developing strategy and working within committees to develop projects supporting wider strategy. The programme is also designed to provide personal skills such as developing your personal profile and networking. This programme will be led by the Past-President, and I look forward to seeing what the first cohort for this programme brings!
I am pleased to have seen the highest impact factor for the European Journal of Endocrinology during my time on the Executive Committee, and to see the transition of our wonderful journal successfully to the world leading publisher, Oxford University Press - with resulting expanded strategic and financial opportunities for the journal. We are also undergoing a significant project to explore new journal opportunities – more on this soon!
We have also embarked on a significant development of the ESE team, bringing in better systems to support you all and expanding the team to provide an even greater range of services for you.
One of my priorities was to improve ESE equality, inclusion and diversity. I am pleased to have developed a policy on this, and one example of an improvement is that we are now in a second year of an open call for committee nominations. We have also launched the European Women in Endocrinology group, taking up the initiative of prominent female ESE members, and this is now active. And as you will have seen from the vote for the President-Elect position, our first female President-Elect and subsequently President is guaranteed! Our approach is encapsulated in our ‘Way that we work’ statement - We aspire to be visionary, inspiring, engaging and supportive. We are open, transparent and inclusive in everything that we do and work towards diversity across our activities.’ We know that we can further improve in this area and are working to do so!
We continue to stand together with our endocrine community to support our friends, members and all those impacted within Turkey and Syria following the devastation caused by the earthquake earlier this year, and with our friends in Ukraine as the war continues.
I would like to thank everyone I have worked with – our Executive Committee, all the members of our committees, task forces, Focus Area leads and expert panels, our team and all of our members - for making my time as your President so enjoyable and satisfying.
Finally, I hope to see many of you in Istanbul for the 25th European Congress of Endocrinology. As well as fantastic scientific sessions we can enjoy many moments of networking and friendship. If you have not registered yet, please do so on our website at www.ese-hormones.org.
With warmest wishes to you all.
Martin Reincke
ESE President