‘Our future is bright’: ACG president kicks off annual meeting with recognition, gratitude
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VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The outgoing ACG president delivered his address at the 2023 Annual Scientific Meeting, highlighting the college’s many achievements and ongoing collegiality, as well as his personal gratitude to colleagues.
“I enthusiastically report to you that our college is exciting, energetic, effective and financially sound,” Daniel J. Pambianco, MD, FACG, FASGE, FAPCR, a gastroenterologist and managing partner at Gastro Health in Virginia, told attendees. “We continue to follow our visionary strategic plan of advancing gastroenterology, improving patient care through excellence and innovation based upon the pillars of patient care, education, scientific investigation, advocacy, and patient and practice management.
“I would like to emphatically note that the ACG has always been on the forefront and proactive on nearly every issue and continues to do so.”
Achievement
Pambianco proudly detailed achievements within the college in 2023, highlighting the growing global presence of ACG and the ongoing work being done in its scientific publications, including the American Journal of Gastroenterology. These publications continue to grow and innovate, he said, pointing toward the addition of a podcast to the Evidence-Based GI publication.
Pambianco also shined a spotlight on endoscopy education, the “triumvirate” of women leading the postgraduate course, and the sessions and lectures featured at the scientific meeting.
Additionally, the practice management course and committee “have evolved to the outstanding group working on the most challenging and ever-changing aspects of clinical gastroenterology,” Pambianco said.
“This amazing group has been prolific in providing both independent practices and hospital-owned and affiliate members of the ACG with appropriate information to help manage and run our medical practices in an efficient and fiscally responsible manner,” he continued. “We all know that this is a quintessence of establishing order out of chaos, and I can’t recommend this group enough.”
Pambianco focused not only on the achievement of established leaders, but also recognized the next generation of gastroenterologists via the ACG Institute.
“Today, under the leadership of Dr. Neena Abraham, the ACG Institute has granted over $2.2 million in research funding in 2023, which included four junior faculty awards of $450,000 each and two novel health equity research grants. This increase in funding plays a pivotal role in advancing our discipline,” he said, and called on the audience to contribute to this fund.
Lastly, Pambianco applauded the efforts to make the college more equitable: Gender parity, recognition of underrepresented minorities and increased visibility of LBGTQ+ members all further the mission of ACG.
“Currently, 24% of our leadership is female,” he said. “In terms of leadership, 30% of our board of trustees, 28% of our governors are female and growing, and 39% of our committee chairs and course chairs at this year’s meeting, and 100% of our postgraduate course directors are females.”
Collegiality
Pambianco also emphasized the collegiality of ACG, which has been guided by advocacy and cooperation during his tenure.
He discussed the annual fly-in, at which experts and early career gastroenterologists meet with government officials to push for ACG-sponsored bills that strive to improve patient care.
ACG also joined the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation in a rally outside United Healthcare’s headquarters to publicly oppose the proposed policy of preauthorization “for almost every GI endoscopy code.”
“This policy would have hindered patient access to care, increased practice costs, and negatively impacted colorectal cancer prevention, early detection and patient outcomes,” Pambianco said.
“On May 31, the day before it slated implementation of this program, the ACG joined the Crohn’s and Colitis foundation ... as a symbolic gesture of unity and determination to protect patient well-being,” Pambianco said. “On June 1, United announced postponement of their implementation of the priority authorization plan. I’m proud of how our members, patients and leaders came together in the face of adversity, demonstrating resilience, compassion and an unyielding commitment to our mission of patient care.”
This collaboration was the result of continued collegiality with other organizations, including the Digestive Disease National Coalition and GI OnDemand.
The ACG value of continued education evolved in the pandemic as virtual grand rounds was born, providing an array of GI speakers and topics weekly.
“As of early October this year, there have been over 400 programs touching over hundreds of thousands of viewers. This remains a remarkable addition to our stable of educational programming,” Pambianco said.
ACG education furthered its mission with advanced practice provider training featuring more than 60 hours of lectures, an endoscopy manual and primer, and a new GI cancer risk assessment tool and genetic testing program.
“This program streamlines family history risk assessment, genetic education, genetic testing and post-testing genetic counseling,” Pambianco said. “This is a remarkable addition to our goal of colon cancer prevention.”
Tools such as GIQuIC are also seeing new growth “to include ERCPs, EUS, bariatrics and nonprocedural quality metrics including IBD and liver disease,” he said.
Gratitude
Lastly, Pambianco spoke of his gratitude to his mentors, the ACG staff, the board of trustees and members of the college, along with his family.
“It’s been a true honor to serve as your president and an amazing professional highlight and gift from my ACG family. I am so proud to be a part of ACG history and confident together with everything we have here, our future is bright,” he said. “It’s been a tremendous honor and I just can’t express that enough.”
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Pambianco DJ. President’s address. Presented at: ACG Annual Scientific Meeting; Oct. 20-25, 2023; Vancouver, British Columbia (hybrid meeting).
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