Professor Sarah Rowland-Jones reflects on the past year at RSTMH

2016 was an exciting year for RSTMH in many ways, and also a turning point when we said goodbye in July to the Society’s first CEO, Gerri McHugh. We thank her most warmly for the huge amount of work she has put into the Society, particularly for transforming its structures and governance – we wish her every success as she moves on to a number of new activities, and will certainly miss her energy, enthusiasm and passion for global health.

We also said goodbye to a long term friend and champion for the Society, Professor Simon Hay. Professor Hay worked with the RSTMH in several ways, on the Editorial board, as a Trustee and as RSTMH President. We would like to thank him for his continued effort and support.

The Society was happy to make an exciting new CEO appointment, Tamar Ghosh, who started with us in November. Tamar has an extensive background in international health and joined us after leading the Longitude Prize for Antimicrobial resistance. The Trustees are delighted to be able to work with Tamar who is bringing a new energy to the Society: expect a number of new initiatives in 2017! We are also keen to hear YOUR views about shaping the RSTMH for the future – if you haven’t done so already, please take a few moments to fill in the questionnaire you can find here.

This year our journals saw Transactions publish two special issues: Foodborne Trematodes and the End TB strategy and the Sustainable Development Goals and International Health published a Supplement from the Neglected Tropical Disease NGDO Network ‘Reflections on accomplishments in the prevention, treatment and management of consequences of NTDs’, plus we saw the launch of our Ethics Series.

The Society celebrated a number of recent firsts in 2016.

Amongst these was our first overseas meeting for many years, jointly held in Nairobi with the Academy of African Science (AAS) in July 2016, celebrating excellent African science and focusing on the demographic transition in health on the continent. The participants left the meeting full of enthusiasm about the quality of health research in Africa and we aim to hold similar meetings in the future.

We also made our first Emerging Leaders award, a new award for early career investigators from low/middle-income countries: the first recipient was Dr Kebede Deribe of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, who presented some of his work on mapping the distribution of podoconiosis at the Biennial RSTMH conference in Cambridge in September. The award includes £5,000, together with support to attend the Biennial meeting and access to mentorship through the Society. We hope Kebede will be the first of a cohort of investigators working in LMIC who can support one another as well as receiving help from the Society.

We also awarded the Chalmers Medal to Professor Abdisalan Noor, The Mackay Medal to Professor Moses Bockarie and the Manson Medal, RSTMH’s highest mark of distinction, to Professor Peter Piot. Further details about these awards can be found in Simon Cathcart’s blog here.

2016 also saw a doubling in the funding available through the RSTMH small grants scheme, which aims to support early career researchers in all disciplines in tropical and global health, through the provision of small research grants and scholarships for travel and training. Over one hundred applications were received and 36 awards, worth nearly £100,000, were made. The call for 2017 is currently open with a deadline of Friday January 27th.

The RSTMH meeting calendar remained full, with the ever-popular “Topics in Infection” in early February, a meeting on Ending the TB epidemic in March, and the joint meeting with AAS in Nairobi in July. Our Biennial conference focused on the challenges of disease elimination across a range of human and animal infections. A particularly moving moment for the audience was to hear Dr Roy Vagelos describe how he guided the Board of Merck to agree to the long-term donation of Ivermectin, making a significant contribution towards the elimination of onchocerciasis in Africa. Another special feature of the meeting was the presentation by Professor Liao on the Nobel-prize winning discovery of the anti-malarial drug Artemisinin by the team led by Professor Tu Youyou: Professor Tu was unable to join us but sent a message to the conference in an interview filmed with RSTMH Trustee, Judy MacArthur Clark.

The year has finished with two recent meetings: one focusing on aspects of Migrant Health, the second being our annual Research in Progress meeting which provided opportunities for 26 early career researchers to present their work. During the latter part of the meeting, this year’s Christmas Manson lecture was delivered by Prof Alan Fenwick, who has recently announced his retirement. He gave a fascinating account of his extensive research career, entitled ‘Tropical medicine, 100 years on from Sir Patrick Manson’.

2016 really was a packed year of incredible activity for RSTMH and we look forward to 2017 being just as busy.