Abstract
I am delighted to have taken over the helm as President of the International Headache Society (IHS) from Professor Michael A. Moskowitz in September 2009, and look forward to leading the society through the next two years with the help of the Board of Trustees, the Standing Committees and Special Interest Groups of IHS.
Following the adoption of our new Memorandum and Articles in 2008, 2009 was a year of transition, full of new opportunities and challenges. There were two main highlights of the year.
Our Online Learning and Education Centre, championed by Dr Alan Rapoport and his committee, was launched in January and continued to be enhanced throughout the year. The centre includes slide presentations, book chapters and two sessions from the International Headache Congress, which were recorded and are uploaded as webcasts.
Our International Headache Congress was held in September in Philadelphia, USA, in conjunction with the American Headache Society. The congress attracted more than 1,000 delegates from all over the world who enjoyed a varied programme of teaching courses, scientific sessions, poster sessions and satellite symposia, offering an update in both the state of the science of headache medicine and state-of-the-art care for headache sufferers.
Our next congress will be held in June 2011, in Berlin, and all IHS members will shortly be contacted to solicit ideas for the programme.
We start 2010 with a new publisher for Cephalalgia and exciting new features will be added to the journal, including a complementary online platform. IHS members also now benefit from online access to The Neuroscientist, also published by SAGE, a journal in which state-of-the-art reviews keep you up-to-date on the advances emerging in the neurosciences and related disciplines.
Members of the International Headache Society are well aware of the society's commitment to helping people whose lives are affected by headache disorders.
I have exciting plans for the future of IHS, which involve working closely with and supporting our Affiliate Member Societies. My goal is to create an umbrella society, in which all those belonging to the Affiliate Member Societies will be members of IHS through their national society. We want all members to feel involved with IHS through their national society and will strive to achieve this through initiatives with the American Headache Society, the European Headache Federation and the Japanese Headache Society, key regional societies with the same goals and accomplishments as we have. During the recent IHC I met with representatives from these regional societies to discuss how we can best work together for the benefit of people with headache and achieve our mission, to advance headache science, education, and management, and promote headache awareness worldwide.
Through collaboration with our Affiliate Member Societies, we will continue to expand the resources on our Online Learning and Education Centre, creating a multilingual, global educational platform with the addition of more materials in several different languages.
I look forward to the next exciting chapter in the future of IHS.
