RSTMH 2023: Our year in review

This year we rolled out our new 5-year strategy, and alongside publishing our new strategy, we launched it online and also in person. If you were unable to attend, you can see our strategy here. This year we were also delighted to record a short video which sums up our work as a society which you can see here. Elements of our new strategy which are worth noting include an aim to start a Regional Meeting which will move around the regions of the world. We also pledged to start more activities to directly help our members and Fellows to grow and share their knowledge through more online webinars and discussions.  
 

Throughout 2023, we received over 600 submissions o the RSTMH journals, Transactions of the Royal Society of Medicine and Hygiene (TRSTMH) and International Health.

We curated article collections for World Leprosy Day, World Health Day, World Chagas Disease Day, International Snakebite Awareness Day, World Rabies Day, World AMR Awareness Week and World Aids Day and launched open calls for two special issues due to publish in 2024 - Addressing the snakebite challenge: progress towards the 2030 roadmap and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in Global Health: impact, evaluation, and implementation. We also published the following supplements in International Health.

• Lessons from CouNTDown: Implementation research supporting the WHO NTD roadmap (April, 2023).
• Trachoma: Accelerating progress to elimination as a public health problem (December, 2023)
• Mental Health, Stigma and Neglected Tropical Diseases: Part A (December, 2023)

We were pleased to have increases in our CiteScore, JCIs, and H Index across both journals, and an increase in the number of full text downloads compared to 2022. The time taken from submission to first decision and also from acceptance to online publication have also decreased. Both journals remain listed as Q3 journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), TRSTMH with an Impact Factor of 2.1 and International Health an Impact Factor of 2.5.

In July 2023, we launched an open call for new Associate Editors, with the specific aim of increasing the diversity of our Editorial Boards, in terms of gender and geographic location, and to ensure the expertise across our boards reflects the varied topics seen in our submissions. We subsequently appointed 19 new Associate Editors, with representation from across 12 countries and 4 continents.

In September 2023, we announced the launch of four new article types (Case Reports, Lessons from the Field, Letter to the Editor (Matters Arising) and Letters to the Editor (Other)) across both TRSTMH and International Health. We hope these will provide further opportunities for those already working within tropical medicine and global health to disseminate their work, as well as those at the beginning of their careers, and to stimulate scientific debate around work published in the journals.

In November 2023 the Managing Editor, along with the Editors in Chief of TRSTMH and International Health attended the ASTMH Annual Meeting in Chicago. This was a great opportunity to promote the RSTMH, meet authors, reviewers and members of our Editorial Boards, commission work and strengthen partnerships with a range of organisations.

We would like to say a huge thanks to our dedicated community of authors and reviewers and extend our gratitude to our Editors in Chief, Associate Editors, and wider Editorial Board for their support and guidance over the past year.

This year at RSTMH, we have delivered 14 events, 9 of which took place online and 5 in-person. This included our Annual Meeting, our first Online Research in Progress meeting, and webinars on topics including AIDS and NTDs. 

This year we also conducted a total of 8 partner meetings or events across India and Japan. They were a combination of events with faculty and students about RSTMH, or talks at conferences about our work. They included events at the University of Nagasaki in Japan, at AIIMS Delhi in India and also at the Joint Conference on Global Health at the University of Tokyo. These meetings and events are crucial to raise awareness of our work to new audiences and also develop new partnerships. We have done this at six institutions across India through the signing of MOUs. 

Our Annual Meeting this year was on the theme ‘Tropical Medicine and Global Health: Priorities for the next 5 years’. During the two days, our two tracks saw topics from NTDs, to malaria, humanitarian health and refugees, to climate change, and AI. Recordings of all sessions at this year’s Annual Meeting are now available here. We welcomed delegates from 24 countries, and featured speakers including Dr Ibrahima Socé Fall, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, Dr Bhargavi Rao, Professor Thomas Churcher, Dr Aula Abbara, Dr Bern-Thomas Nyang’wa, Dr Emma Taylor, Dr Luis Pizarro, Professor Jimmy Whitworth, Dr Ghada Zoubiane, Dr Adam Roberts, Dr Charles Mowbray, Professor Madhabananda Kar, Dr Craig Tipple, Professor Sir Andy Haines, Dr Quudus Yusuff, Professor Anthony Costello, Professor John Crump, Dr Wendy Harrison, and many more. 

We are excited to announce that work has already begun on our Annual Meeting 2024 and ask you to save the date - 3 – 4 October 2024 in London, UK.

We are looking forward to delivering further successful events in 2024, including our first Regional Meeting which we hope will take place in February 2024, and developing our meeting and events calendar while improving accessibility through holding more events outside of the UK and supporting those early in their careers
 

This year we would not have been able to achieve what we have without the incredible support of all of our volunteers. Our Board of Trustees, Committee members, Global Assessors, Country and Student Ambassadors, Editorial Board members, and reviewers for the journals. Your input on the oversight and daily activities of the society, quality control over our grants and awards, and advice about our work across the world is invaluable, and we really appreciate it. Thank you for helping us achieve so much in the last 12 months. 

The Student Ambassadors programme in 2023 featured a standout component: the monthly blogs authored by the Student Ambassadors themselves. These blogs provided an ideal platform for the ambassadors to showcase their career accomplishments in the fields of tropical medicine and global health. They offered valuable insights and perspectives on the future of global health. Throughout the year, the blogs tackled crucial topics, including emerging infectious diseases, neglected tropical diseases, climate change and health, and innovations in healthcare. The achievements of the Student Ambassadors will continue to be highlighted in 2024.

This year we were really sad to hear that former RSTMH Honorary Treasurer Dr David Evans passed away. Dr David Evans was known for his research over three decades on trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis. 

Other sad losses to our community included long-term member Professor Anthony Bryceson. Anthony had been an RSTMH member since 1967 and served on the Council and on the Medals and Awards Committee in 1983 and 1984. He was also Honorary Secretary from 1985 to 1989 and was awarded the Chalmers Medal in 1979.

We also learned of the death of Kamran Rafiq, co-founder of the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases (ISNTD), who was a great champion of work to tackle NTDs. 
 

This year we welcomed two new members of the team, our new Membership Manager Nisreen Hamad and also our new Administrative Assistant Ayooluwa Ibinayo. We were also pleased that Eva McLean moved into the new role of Meetings and Events Officer.

At the start of the year Georgia Crowley was supporting us as Team and Office Manager as maternity cover for Amelia until she returned as Senior Manager Team and Operations. We also had Adheem Malik in the team as Grants Manager for a few of the busiest months of the year to support our Grants Programme. 

The team remains a small but incredible group of committed and hard-working individuals who work together to achieve all we do. 

This was a good year for increasing our income as we again received increased support for our Grants Programme, our journals and for partner webinars. As the year came to an end we have some exciting opportunities for new funding partnerships which we look forward to exploring in the new year.