Abstract
32nd Annual Scientific Sessions of the Society for Vascular Medicine: Virtual meeting, September 11, 2021
Dear Society for Vascular Medicine (SVM) members, colleagues, and friends, welcome to yet another year of excellent virtual scientific sessions organized by the Program Committee. I have enjoyed the sessions so far, and I look forward to attending several more sessions today. I hope you will as well.
I present to you the second of my two Presidential Addresses, a tradition that has been ongoing since the inception of our Society. As your pandemic and virtual president, everything has been, shall we say, ‘interesting’ in my 2 years as the President of SVM, which concluded on June 18th of this year, thereby delaying my final Presidential address.
After our annual meeting last year, it was clear to SVM leadership that a change in our association management company was imminent. This was a tough decision. Several thoughts came to mind, and several valid comments and concerns were raised. The most memorable ones were as follows. This is a huge undertaking that would entail a lot of work. The search should result in minimal interference to the 2022 Annual Meeting planning; how can we be sure that we won’t end up in a similar or worse situation with a new company? How do we navigate this complex process? I must admit, those were some scary days.
I would like to share two quotes from the Bhagavad Gita: ‘We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clearer path to a lesser goal’, and ‘Perform your obligatory duty because action is indeed better than inaction’. Inaction was not an option at the time. After calling for a swift closed SVM Board of Trustees meeting and with a unanimous decision, we embarked on this challenging task. With the support of the Board of Trustees and, more importantly, the enormous help of the SVM Executive Committee, we established a task force for the management change. We also hired a consultant, Mr Terrance Barkan, and an attorney to help us navigate this complex process. Over the ensuing 6 months, a transition plan was mapped. We secured our finances, sought requests for proposals, conducted interviews, and ultimately selected our new management company.
I want all of us to understand why this endeavor was so crucial for SVM. Why change the management company after 14 years? The answer to this question will provide us with a comprehensive summary of the state of our Society.
During my SVM tenure on the Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee, I have witnessed a significant increase in our footprint in the vascular community. Although our membership remained steady, our portfolio of activities expanded significantly. Our offerings no longer remained just the annual meeting. We added several other programs that needed management help and volunteers. One of such endeavors was the Fellows Course started in 2015, which became a huge success, placing SVM as the pre-eminent vascular education resource for cardiovascular trainees. The Advanced Practice Provider (APP) Course added in 2019 also became an instant success. Objectively speaking, the last Fellows Course registration was completely full within 2 weeks, and the APP course registration was closed in 2–3 days. The Society pulled this off without any dollars assigned to the marketing budget. These programs reduced our dependence on the annual Scientific Sessions for revenue generation, providing us with much-needed financial stability. We also partnered with other societies and educational entities on advocacy issues, guideline writing collaborations, patient and provider education, and virtual continuing medical educational content. The committee and task force workload increased due to growth in the overall number and scope of initiatives. New programs have been added continually, such as the RPVI (Registered Physician in Vascular Interpretation) review course. SVM is more sought after now than ever before in my experience.
Those who are old enough will remember the dire financial state of our Society at one point. All the said activities, collaborations, programs, and the steady relationships we have built with our industry colleagues brought us into a healthy financial state. This trend will hopefully continue.
We needed a partner who would help the volunteer officers better manage SVM. We needed a partner who provides outstanding customer support to our members. We needed a partner who could help us with virtual content in the modern world. Veritas Association Management Company became our new partner in April. I am sure the SVM leaders and members will notice a significant improvement in the functioning of our Society. We are certainly in a better place now.
There are a few more milestones that I need to report:
In the coming year, SVM will be a signatory on multisocietal consensus documents in the veno-lymphatic space for the first time, including a Consensus on Lymphedema Diagnosis and clinical practice guidelines on varicose veins. I hope we remain involved and leave a mark in all aspects of vascular medicine and provide a home to vascular medicine specialists practicing all aspects of vascular medicine.
We have re-engaged our efforts in subspecialty recognition. The Subspecialty Recognition Task Force members are working arduously. We submitted our application to the ACGME for accreditation of our fellowship programs in April. After a public comment period, we presented our case to their ad hoc committee in July. Approval by the ACGME Board of Directors is the final step in this process. We hope to hear about their decision before the end of September. In the entire process, the review of the public comments was most inspiring to the Task Force members. A few remarks from entities that we expected to be negative were negative, but the comments from members, organizations, medical institutions, and other sister societies were overwhelmingly positive. Reading about vascular medicine’s impact on these institutions and hearing about how our field improved patient care was simply heartwarming. These comments invigorated us to jump-start our re-engagement with the American Board of Internal Medicine for subspecialty recognition. We hope to present our application for their 2022 summer meeting. You will be kept abreast of the subspecialty recognition developments through the SVM headquarters’ communications.
When the pandemic shook up the DEI issues in our country, we elevated DEI internally and created a task force. Under their guidance, SVM was among the few cardiovascular societies to release a statement decrying violence and bigotry against Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities in March 2021. I hope that this task force will help us become even more inclusive and more diverse in the years ahead.
With great pride, I report to you that many past Next Generation Committee members are current committee chairs. One of them has even ascended to the Board of Trustees. The enthusiasm these members bring is infectious; their dedication and their hard work is inspiring. A succession plan is vital for preserving the future of any society. We have done well, in my opinion. SVM’s future is in good hands!
When I look back on my 2-year term, most of it has been pandemic. We all went through the initial surge, dealing with our busy work lives and balancing our personal lives while trying to protect ourselves and our families. Most of us have lost someone near and dear to us to COVID-19. Now, we are dealing with the Delta variant. But, as humans, we kept pivoting. We found alternate ways to work from home and accomplish our career goals without getting on a plane, without traveling, and without proper below-the-waist attire. Most of us had more dinner table conversations with our families than ever before during this pandemic. We made memories that will be with us for a lifetime. At SVM, we missed our annual in-person Scientific Sessions, and we canceled our 2020 Fellows and APP courses. Instead, we seized this opportunity to evaluate our internal affairs critically and to set those affairs in order while working diligently in other aspects to remain the leaders in the vascular space and focus on our subspecialty recognition efforts.
I decided not to mention any SVM member names during this address because there are too many to thank this year. The other SVM leaders or I have emailed you, texted you, called you, and then repeated multiple times. You have volunteered, chaired, mentored, or called on industry colleagues. You have created content, recorded content, or represented SVM at another venue. You know who you are. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
With our new association management company, strong finances, healthy membership, and renewed subspecialty recognition efforts, I am delighted to give way to the new SVM leadership. I am eager to watch the ongoing success of SVM and the many accomplishments that you all will achieve in the future, and especially our aspirational goal of subspecialty recognition. I encourage the members to get involved, volunteer, bring novel ideas to the table to help our Society, and inform the leadership about the issues that matter the most to you.
It has been an honor to serve SVM. I am beyond grateful for this opportunity. I will cherish these memories, the friendships, and the conversations for the rest of my life.
Finally, I would like to thank my family – my three sons Rohit, Surya, and Rishi, for tolerating a goofy dad and my crazy schedule; and my wife, certainly my better half, Srilatha, for being my guide, inspiration, and support. I have followed her for over 30 years and will continue to do so.
Stay well! Hope to see you in person in 2022! Thank you.
Note: The video of Dr. Kolluri’s Presidential Address is available online at the following link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgjOj-Rixto&feature=youtu.be.
