Voting for 2015 ATS Secretary-Treasurer Election Begins with New Podcast Release
The ATS is now accepting your votes for the 2015 ATS Secretary-Treasurer Election. The two candidates are Gerard Criner, MD, and Polly Parsons, MD. Dr. Criner is professor of medicine, Florence P. Bernheimer Distinguished Service Chair, director of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Temple Lung Center at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Dr. Parsons is the E.L. Amidon professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Vermont.
The choice you make is critical, as the successful candidate will not only serve as secretary-treasurer during the 2015–16 term but also as president in 2018–2019.
The deadline to vote is March 27, and members may cast their votes by following the instructions here.
To kick off the election, the ATS Nominating Committee invited ATS Past President Nicholas S. Hill, MD, to moderate a discussion between the candidates in a new podcast special. During the discussion, Dr. Hill, chief of the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Division at Tufts Medical Center, poses the following questions based on those submitted by ATS members and reviewed by the Nominating Committee.
Introductions
Introductions by ATS Past President Nicholas S. Hill, MD, and 2015 ATS Secretary-Treasurer Election Gerard Criner, MD, and Polly Parsons, MD.
Leadership Qualifications
What are your leadership qualities that you consider particularly advantageous if you become an ATS officer?
Making ATS Relevant to Trainees
The majority of our members identify themselves as clinicians. What would you attempt to make the ATS more relevant, including attracting and retaining members in training?
Welcoming Other Professionals to ATS
Most critical care physicians in the U.S. are pulmonary trained. This is not the case in most of the rest of the world. What would you do to make non-pulmonary/critical care specialists feel more at home in the ATS?
Affordability of ATS
Do you have ideas about how to make Society membership and international conference attendance more affordable for multidisciplinary colleagues who don’t have access to travel funding?
Patient Inclusion and ATS PAR
One thing that distinguishes the ATS from many other professional societies is the inclusion of patients via the ATS Public Advisory Roundtable. Would you make attempts to strengthen our relationships with patient organizations, and how would you do that?
ABIM Maintenance of Certification
The American Board of Internal Medicine Certification and Maintenance of Certification programs have been the target of criticism by physicians in all medicine subspecialties, not only pulmonary/critical care medicine, leading to the suspension of two parts of the MOC program for two years. What are your views on the MOC process, the recent suspension, and what role do you see for ATS in helping ABIM move forward as it revises its program?
Fundraising and Increasing Research Grants
What strategies do you favor for improving fundraising so that the ATS can give out more research grants?
Diversifying Revenue Streams
You both talked about the importance of diversifying revenue streams for the ATS. Can you give some specific examples of areas that might offer opportunities for such diversification?
Improving the ATS International Conference
What do you think needs to be improved at the ATS annual meeting?
Improving ATS Journals
What about the ATS journals needs to be improved, and how would you advocate for those improvements?
ATS Global Outreach and Conclusion
Should the ATS attempt to enhance its international standing, and how should it accomplish that?
Want to Learn More about the Candidates?
Drs. Criner and Parsons have written brief statements and responded to 11 key questions regarding their visions for the future of the Society. They have also prepared three-minute video introductions. Before you make this important decision, please review their statements and videos here.
