Dear members of the ESNM,
On behalf of ESNM Steering Committee, we would like to take this occasion to wish you a very happy holiday season and a very happy new year.
Due to the Covid-19 situation, times have been challenging for everyone and it is now very important to take some downtime to celebrate with your friends and families.
Despite the difficulties over the last year, the Steering Committee of ESNM has remained very active. We have been able to participate in several important education programmes, including a webinar series in cooperation with our sponsor Bromatec. These webinars were very highly attractive, reaching audiences of over 1000 or more and with excellent feedback. Should you have missed them, please visit our youtube channel.
For 2022, we are currently planning a new series of webinars as well as several educational activities including guidelines and consensus statements. A list of all the guidelines published in the last couple of years can be found on our website. We hope that they will provide you with the best practice guidelines in our speciality and would like to thank UEG for their continuing support and funding over the years.
Our NeuroGASTRO 2021 Conference was very successful with a large attendance from around the world. We have heard some excellent lectures by internationally renowned experts and I am particularly pleased that a lot of trainees and young investigators actively participated in our meeting. We are now in the planning stages of the NeuroGASTRO 2023 Conference which will be held in Bucharest, Romania. Please mark your calendars for August 30th to September 2nd, 2023. We are working on putting together a very exciting programme. We are hoping to redefine the horizon in the field of Neuro-Gastroenterology.
This year several long term members have unfortunately left the Steering Committee and we would like to thank Agata Mulak, Beate Niesler, Frank Zerbib and Jan Tack for their time and hard work during their time with us! Newly joining our Steering Committee are Jean-Marc Sabaté, Ricard Farré, Jutta Keller and Marek Waluga. We are also very pleased to have two Early Career Young Investigators, Kristin Elfers, Chloé Melchior joining the members of our Steering Committee.
The Steering Committee and I are very saddened by the news of the untimely death of our colleague and friend Radislav Novak. He was a rising star within our specially and was highly regarded by our community. In the short time, he was involved with our society, he has been extremely transformative and was involved in many different initiatives. His memory will live on and we will hope to honour him accordingly.
In the next year, we also would like to engage with our basic science colleagues even further and hope that our future educational programme and our conferences will be a reflection of the whole breadth of our speciality from translational to basic medicine.
Wishing you all the best for the new year,
With warm regards
Qasim Aziz
ESNM President
