Education Council Update

John R. Dimar, II, MD
Education Council Chair

The Education Council Chair’s responsibility is to coordinate the various committees under their purview to develop a cohesive and progressive educational program with the major assistance of the SRS staff and then coordinate the initiatives with the Presidential Line for approval. There has been a recent reorganization of the committees reporting to the chair following the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia with the current committees reporting to this position being the Program, IMAST, E-Text, Education, World Wide Course (WWC), CME, & Education Task Force Committees. These committees have worked together to fulfil the new guidelines for CME planning via Gap Analysis and Backward Planning to create the society’s new Core Curriculum and educational course structure that consists of IMAST, the Annual Meeting, the various World Wide Courses (3-5 Yearly), Spine Deformity Solutions: A Hands-On Course (biannual), and the new SRS organized Current Concepts in Spine Deformity (2 Yearly) that incorporate the new SRS Branded Core Curriculum developed by the Core Curriculum Task Force led by Laurel Blakemore. The World Wide Courses, Hands-On Courses, and Current Concept Courses are all coordinated by Benny Dahl and the WWC committee. The first two Current Concept Courses were held in Prague, Czech Republic and Shenzhen, People's Republic of China and were very successful. Subsequent courses will be held in Bordeaux, France and Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2018. One of the society’s new initiatives is the development of an annual SRS Course Chair Development Program for our new course chairs to enhance their educational skills, with the first training session being held in December 2017.

I hope that many of you had an opportunity to attend this year’s IMAST meeting in Cape Town and the Annual Meeting & Course in Philadelphia. They offered superb educational opportunities and were the product of the creative efforts of the IMAST committee led by Ron Lehman and Henry Halm, the Program Committee led by Muharrem Yazici, and the Education Committee led by Praveen Mummaneni.  All of the meetings provided the latest knowledge updates, techniques, and hands on training opportunities and were a great success with our surveys showing excellent attendee satisfaction.

Next year’s 25^th anniversary IMAST meeting in Los Angeles is currently being planned by Ron Lehman, Henry Halm, and the IMAST committee. Suken Shah and the Education Committee are working closely with Greg Mundis and the Program Committee to plan the Annual Meeting & Course to be held in Bologna, Italy in October. There have been over 30 applications to the Education Committee for new and innovative Half Day Courses and Lunchtime Symposia while the committee is also currently developing a new and informative Pre-Meeting Course. These committees will continue to develop innovative and exciting educational programs for the Annual Meeting & Course and IMAST that incorporate more paper presentations, didactic lectures, case discussions, debates and pioneering, high quality media presentations. Scientific Paper presentations are the soul of these important meetings so I would like to encourage all members, spine specialists and researchers to strongly consider submitting your scientific paper abstracts for presentation.

SRS continues to be the premier international spinal deformity research society that continually seeks to develop new and innovative educational programs. We invite all members to attend our highly rated annual educational venues and to consider participation in our educational planning committees.