Letter from the ISSM President Annamaria Giraldi
Dear Members,
Time is flying!
In a few weeks I will end my period as president of our society. As it often happens in life, it is strange how quickly time passes by. It feels like minutes ago that I took over, and now the term is running out.
It gives me the opportunity to reflect over the status of our society.
We are as a society doing very well despite the many crises the world has faced and face right now. In contrast to many other societies, we currently have the highest number of members ever (3000+) and our numbers are still growing. Our 3 journals’ impact factors have gone up as well, as are the number of papers that we publish. We have initiated new initiatives like our monthly webinars, who are still very well attended, expanded our Online University and importantly decided to have annual scientific meetings instead of biennial scientific meetings. All these initiatives and developments reflects a vibrant and growing society with active and dedicated members from all around the world, dedicated committee chairs, committee members, and editors of our journals all helped by the professional and strong support from our office Status Plus. I feel extremely proud of our society every time I attend our webinars, open our journals, see the expansion of the university, receive the reports from our hard-working committees, participate in meetings with our regional societies and receive personal messages from members from every corner of the world.
Just as the world is changing, our society has changed during the last years and will continue to do so in the future. As you know our society originates as an association dedicated to impotence research with a very strong connection to urology. We still have this strong connection to urology and shall continue to have it. But the field of sexual medicine has evolved and so have we. The focus of our society has shifted from being solely erectile dysfunction-focused towards addressing the whole spectrum of human sexuality male, female, and non-gender specific. Our current vision underwrites that evolution as it states that “Every human being has the right to a healthy and satisfying sexual life.” This is reflected in many of our initiatives and very visible in the varied and highly interesting program for our World Meeting in Miami in a few weeks.
I want to thank the scientific co-chairs Alan Shindel and Linda Vignozzi and the scientific committee for their hard work, and also thank the SMSNA for the collaboration on this meeting – ISSM is nothing without the regional societies. It will be wonderful to meet in person again – see old friends and colleagues, get new friends, learn from the many inspiring talks, and bring a lot of knowledge back to clinical work and research. And we are already planning the 2023 World Meeting on Sexual Medicine which will be in Dubai, UAE, from December 15-17, 2023 in collaboration with the MESSM.
One matter I hope we will do better in the future is to attract more members to run for positions in the ISSM Board of Directors and the ISSM Executive Committee. I hope that we in the future will have more representations with candidates from all over the world, of both sexes and representing a diversity of specialities. Please consider if you would like to run in 2024 – and always feel free to contact me or the office so we can plan to have a list of candidates for the next election.
So, when I will be handing the position as president to Gerald Brock in a few weeks it is a growing, developing, and vibrant society with thousands of dedicated members. It is also a society with many new initiatives on its way. Soon we will have two systematic reviews from our consultation and guideline committees on New Regenerative Interventions in Sexual Medicine and on Female Genitopelvic Pain, the efforts of many ours hard work, we are working on re-establishing our in person International Consultation Meeting on Sexual Medicine (ICSM) and the ISSM Executive Committee is working on an ISSM diversity, equity and inclusion guidance helped by the ethics committee. Gerald Brock will update you shortly on other new initiatives coming up.
I look forward continuing as Past President for the next two years, to work with the new EC, board and Gerry Brock as president and maybe to get a bit more time with the family.
It has been such an inspiring two years and an honour and pleasure to work with all of you - a heartfelt THANK YOU!
I look forward to welcoming you all in Miami soon!
Warm regards,
Annamaria Giraldi
President ISSM
