Abstract
Update from the Honorary Secretary
When I studied medicine, I never thought that I would ever become a headache specialist and a headache researcher. It happened by chance in 1994 that the Headache Clinic in our Department needed a new Director and nobody but me was interested. Since then, I have been working in this field and I am still surprised by how fascinating it is. Headache medicine is both basic neuroscience and helping patients successfully, in most cases. You cannot say this for many other fields in neurology.
Over the years I have worked as President of the German Migraine and Headache Society from 2004 to 2007, and as Chair of the Headache Panel of the European Federation of Neurological Societies. This work gave me much insight into politics and into different organisations. There were two major programmes I tried to build up. First, evidence-based guidelines on all aspects of headache treatment were developed, and now in Europe guidelines for all major headache disorders are published. Secondly, young colleagues interested in research or clinical work in headache were invited to join a group, which meets regularly. They discuss their research projects and interesting headache cases in a self-organised way.
Based on this experience I was happy to take over the position as Honorary Secretary of the IHS from Judith Lutz-Burns in June 2011. As Secretary, it is my job to deal with the ‘daily business' of our society. This means a lot of email conversation all over the world, and discussion of new projects in close cooperation with our President and with Carol Taylor, the Society’s Administrative Manager. So, any questions or ideas can be forwarded to me (email: everss@uni-muenster.de), and I will be happy to help.
Stefan Evers
University of Münster, Germany
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