President Update- Cathy Hayward

Cathy Hayward, who is completing the first year of her second term as ISLH President, gave her update on ISLH, to the Board and Invited Guests.

Cathy Hayward acknowledged the ISLH Board and Executive Committee, the Scientific and Educational Committees of ISLH, and the Society’s journal, the International Journal of Laboratory Hematology (IJLH), for their important contributions over the past year. She acknowledged leadership renewal is vital for our Society and expressed a personal thank you to Chuck Eby for continued engagement in ISLH and his excellent work as Chair of the Nominations Committee. The Nominations Committee put together a slate of talented nominees for the ISLH 2018 Board election which will close on May 11, with the results to be announced at the ISLH Business Meeting on the morning of May 12, 2018. Prior to the meeting, Board members  will be asked to approve unopposed nominees for four Executive committee positions via email:  include VP for membership engagement, VP for education,  VP for scientific communication, and President Elect, who will become the President of the Society at the end of the ISLH 2020 meeting when Cathy Hayward completes her term.

Cathy Hayward acknowledged that today’s meeting will have separate reports from the ISLH Treasurer and the ISLH Vice Presidents (VP). She indicated that the management of Conflict-of-Interest (COI) is very important to our Society and Journal, which have well-developed COI policies. 2018 marks the first year that ISLH has a COI Officer and welcomed Samia Rizk for her election to this new role.

Cathy Hayward thanked Pall Onandarsen for his excellent work as the Treasurer of ISLH and acknowledged that ISLH is in very sound financial shape. To ensure initiatives started with the one-time grant from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation continue into the future, ISLH has sought new streams of revenue and that these efforts will continue.

Cathy Hayward indicated that the Society is extremely grateful to the ISLH Vice President (VP) of Scientific Communication, Tracy George, who with Szu-Hee Lee, has expertly co-led the Editorship of IJLH. The Society has benefited from having members of its editorial board, Anthony Bench and Elizabeth Van Cott, serve as the Guest Editors of this year’s Educational Issue of IJLH. Cathy Hayward thanked the Journal, Editors, staff and reviewers for their efforts on the Journal and its sixth Educational Issue, containing State-of-the-Art reviews by ISLH 2018 speakers. ISLH is grateful for the collaborative efforts between IJLH and ISLH to organize the timelines for submission, and the Journal’s expedited reviews and communications to authors. Attendees will receive a link to the IJLH Educational Issue so that they can access the content, which has free access. Cathy Hayward indicated that it is also important that the Society acknowledge that IJLH has an important role in publishing content that is relevant to the field of laboratory hematology. IJLH and ISLH have benefited from the stronger linkages that developed between the Journal and the Society. ISLH is very thankful that so many individuals have submitted high quality articles to IJLH that have been cited many times. The Society looks forward to the updates and reports from the Editors and the Publisher.

Cathy Hayward acknowledged that Giuseppe d’Onofrio has made important contributions to ISLH that also deserve recognition, in his leadership role as the ISLH VP of membership engagement. In 2017, ISLH created a membership committee. On behalf of ISLH, Cathy Hayward congratulated the committee for their efforts to add value to ISLH membership and increase the engagement of ISLH members in ISLH activities, under Giuseppe d’Onofrio’s leadership.

Cathy Hayward acknowledged Joyce Rogers for her wonderful leadership as the ISLH VP of Education. Under Joyce’s leadership, the Education Committee has made outstanding contributions, to ISLH meetings (and the pre-meeting workshop) and to the development of high quality, online ISLH educational offerings that are adding great value to ISLH membership. The posting of the latest web-based learning materials and webinars are increasing the visits to the ISLH website and are providing many individuals around with globe with important access to laboratory hematology educational updates. Joyce Rogers will update the board on these initiatives.

Cathy Hayward acknowledged that the ISLH meeting is one of our Society’s major educational initiatives. This year’s meeting has been supported by a very large team and ISLH is extremely grateful for having had the opportunity to partner with BSTH. ISLH has used its website to acknowledge the many individual serving on our committees for their valued contributions. She acknowledged the dedication and guidance of Katrien DeVreese (from BSTH), Gina Zini and Pall Onandarsen, as the Scientific Program Co-Chairs, and also the efforts of her co-Director, Chuck Eby, in putting together this year’s scientific program in collaboration with the team of Scientific Committee Chairs, Vice-Chairs and Committee Members. ISLH very much appreciates that BSHT engaged a number of individuals to serve as Vice-Chairs of the ISLH 2018 Program Committees. The end result has been an outstanding and exciting program - ISLH 2018 should prove to be one of the best ISLH meetings ever. The meeting already has many registrants and ISLH is hoping for record or near record attendance.

For this year’s ISLH meeting, our Society received 422 abstract submissions, of which 265 will be presented. ISLH will be awarding 9 Berend Houwen travel awards, 8 trainee travel awards, two young investigator awards and the Carol Briggs top scoring abstract award. The 2018 ISLH meeting marks the second year of welcoming recipients of ISLH Mentorship Awards, and we thank the individuals who agreed to serve as mentors for the award recipients. ISLH will again be recorded its top lecture awards for viewing on the home page of our website as these are attracting many views from around the world and are an important part of the ISLH Global Outreach Efforts. The program has another exciting pre-meeting educational workshop and we thank Joyce Rogers, Ann Merino, Karen Moffat, Ruth Padmore and the other members of the education committee for helping to organize this wonderful educational workshop. As in previous years, the educational workshop speakers will give webinars after the meeting, building upon the successes of the ISLH webinar program.

The 2018 scientific program contains some unique sessions, including: our very first joint ISLH-EHA (European Hematology Association) session at an ISLH meeting, an EHA-ISLH selected Plenary Speaker (Antonio D’Almeida, who will address Hematology Laboratory Training Requirements in Europe), a joint ISLH-ICCS session (in follow up of our previous successful joint session) and another “Women in ISLH Session” based on the popularity of this session that was piloted last year. We hope that ISLH 2018 will prove to be one of the best ISLH meetings ever. In addition to the many simultaneous sessions, oral and poster abstract sessions, there are a number of interesting special plenaries in the ISLH 2018 Program. The 2018 Presidential Symposium (jointly chaired by the current and former ISLH Presidents) will showcase the Berend Houwen lecture (to be given by Jacques van Dongen) and the Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished lecture (to be given by Barbara Bierer). ISLH will be selecting the individuals to be these valued lectures in 2019. ISLH 2018 will include a special plenary focused on challenges to hematology laboratory practice in different regions of the world and another plenary focused on a topic related to ISLH initiatives to reach out and support the world. Very soon, ISLH will start planning for the ISLH 2019 in Vancouver. ISLH has launched a customized portal for speakers, which has been greatly appreciated.

ISLH values its collaborations with other organizations that have been facilitated by the ISLH Educational Grant from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation. ISLH is now a member organization of THSNA, and Cathy Hayward will serve as one of the THSNA 2020 Program Co-Chairs, and will serve a two year term as President of THSNA, starting after the 2020 THSNA meeting. ISLH participation in the THSNA meeting in March 2018 enhanced ISLH educational contributions, outreach and sources of revenue, and ISLH partnered with NASCOLA in the hosting a pre-Summit workshop at THSNA 2018. ISLH is also a member organization of WASPaLM (World Association of Societies of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine). ISLH initiatives to support education in laboratory hematology worldwide were presented at the recent WASPaLM meeting in Kyoto and ISLH received tremendous positive feedback on these initiatives. Cathy Hayward was elected to the WASPaLM Board. Over the past year, ISLH has had the pleasure of participating in joint sessions at the European Hematology Association Congress, the Japanese Society for Laboratory Medicine meeting, the Korean Society for Laboratory Hematology meeting in September, the Korean Society of Laboratory Medicine in October, the WASPaLM meeting in November and the Pakistan Society of Hematology meeting in February. ISLH is collaborating with the Turkish Society of Hematology on a joint session for the TSH meeting later this year. ISLH will be partnering with NASCOLA and also with the Canadian Hematology Society (CHS) and the Canadian Association of Pathology-Association Canadianne des Pathologistes (CAP-ACP) for ISLH 2019. Cathy Hayward had the pleasure of meeting the President of the Emirates Hematology Society as a speaker at their 2018 meeting. The fostering of these partnerships has helped the ISLH global outreach and it has deepened our appreciation of the strengths and challenges of laboratory hematology practice around the globe.

On behalf of ISLH, Cathy Hayward thanked Karen Moffat for her continued, awesome job of posting regular updates to the guideline inventory on the ISLH website. ISLH has had over 6,000 visits to that part of its website so this inventory is providing a popular and important support to the laboratory hematology community.

Cathy Hayward indicated that as President, she is very proud of the many accomplishments of ISLH, including the great success of ISLH meetings, educational initiatives and its growing networks of linkages with other important laboratory hematology and laboratory medicine organizations. The Society is very grateful for the contributions that so many individuals have made to our Society and Journal.

Respectfully submitted by Catherine Hayward