World Wide Course Committee Update

Benny T. Dahl, MD, PhD, DMSci
World Wide Course Committee Chair

The Worldwide Course Committee continues to plan and coordinate three major types of activities under the WWC umbrella: the traditional WWC courses, the Current Concepts in Spine Deformity Courses (CCSD), and the Hands-On Courses.

Since the last newsletter, Hands-On Courses have been held in Nijmegen, Netherlands and Bangkok, Thailand. Both courses were very successful with high attendance and positive evaluation. In October, the Current Concept Course was held in Shenzhen, China in collaboration with the Chinese Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons. With 137 registered participants, and faculty from nine countries the meeting confirmed that the CCC is a valuable concept, that should be continued in the coming years. Valuable feed-back was obtained from younger colleagues, at a brief meeting immediately after the course. Their evaluation will be considered in the planning of future courses, along with the needs assessment prior to planning courses and the development of the current SRS curriculum.

A WWC committee meeting was held on Tuesday, September 5, prior to the SRS Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. Thanks to a high number of committee members attending the meeting, a thorough discussion regarding future WWC activities was completed. There was agreement that the WWC activities should continue to be distributed worldwide, taking into account the overall strategy of the SRS and the SRS goal of establishing strong collaborations with relevant spine societies. Also, there was agreement that longtime planning of WWC activities is necessary and for 2018 the activities have now been planned. These include Hands-on-courses in Houston, Texas and Hong Kong; Current Concept Courses in Bordeaux, France and Buenos Aires, Argentina; and traditional WWC courses in St. Petersburg, Russia and Beijing, China.

 

Chair: Benny T. Dahl Committee: Haluk R. Berk; David S. Marks; Rajiv K. Sethi; Suken A. Shah, Education; Kariman Abelin Genevois (C); Carlos E. Barsotti (C); Chris Yin Wei Chan (C); Katsumi Harimaya (C); Aroldo C. Legarreta (C); Darren F. Lui (C); Ibrahim Obeid (C); Matthew E. Oetgen (C); Bangping Qian (C); Anuj Singla (C); Hany A.G. Soliman (C); Morio Matsumoto; Firoz Miyanji; Yat Wa Wong; J. Michael Wattenbarger, Global Outreach; Saumyajit Basu; Steven M. Mardjetko; Martin Repko