2022: Looking back at the year that has passed

This year we have been working hard to develop our next five-year strategy for the period 2023 to 2028, which we will be launching early next year. This involved workshops and discussions with the team, the Board and our Committees. We also ran a survey and conducted interviews for our members, Fellows and supporters. We heard their thoughts on learnings of the last few years, and their advice of what we should be doing more of, and less of, over the next 5 years. As always you were honest and clear in letting us know what you think and we have spent the last few months working through your advice and ideas to develop an exciting new strategy. 

It is clear from your feedback that there are some stand out successes of the current strategy, which include the growth of our Grants Programme for early career professionals, the expansion of our events and activities around the world (at least before COVID-19 paused them), our focus on supporting our members and Fellows based outside of the UK and early in their careers, and the creation of the voluntary roles of Country and Student Ambassadors, Global Assessors and new editorial Board members. We have been able to deliver mentoring in a few different formats through the years, and this is one area of work which we need to continue to develop.  We also heard of areas where we need to improve - providing more opportunities for networking, for further helping develop new skills and experiences, and also enabling the knowledge of our members and Fellows to be better shared with one another. We should also continue to provide as much opportunity as we can for events across the world, both in person where possible, and virtually, for our members, Fellows and supporters.     

In terms of the new strategy please watch the newsletter early in 2023 when we will be sharing it with our members and Fellows. During the first few months we would also like to present it, online and also in person, at a number of our events and partner organisations. Please do get in touch if you are interested in us arranging a strategy presentation at your organisation. 
 

We would like to thank all our members who have renewed their subscription, as well as those who have joined our community this year. We wouldn’t be RSTMH nor be able to carry out our work without the support of our incredible members and Fellows. This is even more special to us as we know times have been tough for many around the world in terms of covid-19, financial hardship and conflict.

This last year has seen our membership increase once again. We now have over 1,850 members globally, with members in over 100 countries.

This year we were excited to bring together members from across the globe at our online member networking sessions, which we plan to run again in 2023. We were also able to build upon our Members Area, offering exclusive articles to RSTMH members and Fellows.  Finally, we are pleased that more of our members and Fellows have chosen to register with our Members Directory – which enables them to find one another and start discussions and collaborations. During the last couple of years, we hope this has provided more opportunities for our members and Fellows to share ideas and work together.  We continue to look for ways we can enhance the skills, experience and networks of all of our members and Fellows through our own activities.  

This year we once again recognised success in our sector through our Medals and Awards programme.

The winners were announced at our Annual Meeting in Liverpool and saw Professor Sir Alimuddin Zumla win the Sir Patrick Manson Medal, Dr Mian Muhammad Awais win the Emerging Leaders Award, Professor John Crump win the Chalmers Medal, and Professor Rashida Ferrand win the Donald Mackay Medal, awarded in conjunction with the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. During 2023 we will be organising events for each of our medal and award winners, to receive their award, and also to deliver a talk about their work and career success. 

In 2022 we also awarded memberships to individuals from low- and lower-middle income countries as part of our Presidents Fund. Read more about the programme here.
 

This year we welcomed a new Country Ambassador from The Gambia to the RSTMH network and we look forward to be announcing more in the coming year. Our current Country Ambassadors are experts in their fields who help connect us with our members, supporters and networks outside the UK. Find out more about being a Country Ambassador here.

This year we were excited to build upon our three-year dissemination partnership with Sightsavers, which was designed to highlight research and progress on tackling Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) through our many channels. This partnership enables us to share the learnings of Sightsavers major projects with the scientific committee through our journals, with the wider community through webinars and our newsletter and with an even wider audience through our social media.  

We also delivered our first workshop in partnership with DNDi in India. Since 2019 we have been talking about our shared interest in workshops that bring together journalists and early career researchers. This is so they can learn about one anothers work in order to grow skills and networks, and also share ideas of how we can work better together to promote the incredible research in our community. We hope this is the first of many more meetings like this, across the world. 
 

Earlier this year we ran a photo competition to showcase the people, communities, activities, successes and challenges of snakebite and snakebite research, in partnership with Venoms and Toxins 2022, the 9th international toxinology conference at Oxford (UK).  The winning photo is shown at the top of the page and you can see the full ten shortlisted entries here.

We also announce the winner of our 2021 Student Essay Prize. The 2021 prize focused on "Universal Health Coverage". The winning essay was by K.M. Pavani Senarathne who wrote about the healthcare system in Sri Lanka, from the perspective of the common man.

The 2022 student essay prize is now open on the theme of 'health and conflict'. You can find more information here.

This year has seen some changes within the RSTMH staff team, as we said goodbye to our Membership Manager Claire Coveney and our Administrative Assistant Ella Green as they took on new roles. 

We were excited to have a number of new starters joining the team this year, with Marie Ko joining us as Grants Manager, Thomas Pinfield joining as Managing Editor and Eva McLean joining as Administrative Assistant.

This year we once again made our very best efforts to manage our costs and increase our income, so we can cover all of our outgoings. During the strategy we have been slowly closing this gap, and this year was no different, and we have reduced the gap between our costs and our income by around two thirds. 

During the year the incredible donations provided by our members, Fellows and supporters, on top of membership contributions, event ticket sales and grants, were incredible valuable and appreciated. As a charity our need for more income to be able to cover all of our costs continues, and this has been even more strained in recent months as many of our costs have gone up. If you are able to support RSTMH with a donation, no matter how small, we would really appreciate it. You can do so here.

At this time of year, you could provide a suggested donation for one of our lovely bits of merchandise including socks, luggage tags and badges, available here.