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CHEST President-Elect Steven Q. Simpson, MD, FCCP, is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Kansas. He is also senior advisor to the Solving Sepsis initiative of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
As we greet our new incoming CHEST President, we asked him for a few thoughts about his upcoming presidential year. He kindly offered these responses:
What would you like to accomplish as President of CHEST?
This is an interesting question, because a global pandemic and other developments in our world dictate that our organizational goals must adapt to a landscape that has shifted in recent months. My goals as President are somewhat different from what I stated when I ran for the office.
1. First, I will build on the efforts of my predecessors to ensure that CHEST is an inclusive and anti-racist organization. All CHEST members must have equal opportunities within our organization to advance their lives and their careers, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, or gender. My goal is to examine our structures for participation and advancement to positions of leadership in the organization and to evaluate our educational and research offerings, all with the purpose of discovering and remedying places where we have been blind to our own systematic bias. Further, CHEST must advocate for and lead others to advocate for equality, for equal access to medical care, and for policies that promote them. We must be leaders in this arena, through both our voice and our actions.
2. We will build on CHEST’s new initiative to support the wellness of our members and to help us all perform at our best, day in and day out. I hope for our newly established Wellness Center to become a frequent stop for all CHEST members, myself included, to help us to sustain ourselves through the pandemic and beyond.
3. We must maintain both the quality and the feel of our educational and research offerings during this time when we cannot come together in person. My goal for us is that we use this time to embrace remote and nontemporally synchronous education, ie, web-based education, to make CHEST’s offerings the best anywhere. In the remainder of the 21st century, digital transformation of teaching and learning will advance tremendously, and our creative use of technology will become a norm. I hope that we never abandon in-person meetings, but using technology to improve information transfer and augmenting our members’ continuing education are clearly here to stay. My goal for us is that we maintain an atmosphere to both our in-person meetings and our remotely delivered meetings that makes generating new knowledge and learning what we generate enjoyable, even fun. I believe our digital transformation will make some interesting things possible over time.
4. My overall goal for CHEST in the coming year is not that we “make it through” the current pandemic, but that we emerge stronger, smarter, and better for the experience, and prepared for the next challenge(s).
Before COVID-19, I had goals for my presidency, and these issues have not disappeared. CHEST needs to be user- friendly for our members, from our website, to the ways in which we deliver education, to the type of research we develop and promote. On the research side, our members have long been interested in clinical research that informs and improves our patient care. My goal is to double down on promoting, supporting, and presenting research that serves exactly this purpose. We are growing our team-based education, and I have a special goal for CHEST to become the home for pulmonary, critical care, and sleep advanced practice providers. I care tremendously about our international members, and I will promote both international growth and catering of CHEST’s offerings to benefit our international members.
What do you consider to be the greatest strength of CHEST, and how will you build upon this during your Presidency?
There is zero doubt that CHEST’s greatest strength is the people who gravitate to our organization. From pure clinicians to academicians; from clinical researchers to clinical educators to outcomes mavens—all levels of the health-care team. At every level of this organization are members who all want to be better at what we do, who want to figure out the ways for doing that, who want to explore the boundaries of what that means, and who want to help others to do the same. That goes, as well, for the professional staff who support the members, and who have adopted the motto, “CRUSH lung disease,” because they share our mission and are here to help us do it better.
The absolutely most enjoyable thing about leadership is having the opportunity to survey the landscape and see who’s looking for opportunity, who’s a rising star, who’s looking for people to mentor, then matching those people with opportunities and with jobs to do. Good people who are motivated by the right principles rise to the occasion. My job as President is to help ensure that the organization via the CHEST Board of Regents is addressing the correct problems with the right vision, to identify the right talented and dedicated members for the jobs, and then to support and stay out of their way as they make the vision a reality.
What are some challenges facing CHEST, and how will you address these challenges?
The major immediate challenges facing CHEST are pandemic-related, in terms of helping to ensure the well-being of our members, and in helping them to address the inequities and disparities in care for our patients of color, who have been hardest hit by the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. I addressed these with my goals, above. To be more specific, though, our board will be using various techniques, including dialogue with our members of color, to understand and address our own implicit biases, so that we can achieve the correct vision and tone of inclusion for all of our members. Also addressed in my goals is the isolation from one another that we are all experiencing because of the pandemic. This situation makes it difficult for us to maintain the style and tone of live learning experiences that our CHEST members are accustomed to. The challenge is to develop materials that can be interactive at a distance, and this likely includes gamification of educational content and employing virtual reality. CHEST Innovations is already working in this arena, and it will be our job as member volunteers to support those efforts. The isolation affects our international members, as well, and our ability to travel to maintain relationships. The nice thing is that web conferencing works just as well for international meetings as for meetings in the US, although somebody often has to go to bed very late or get up very early in the morning to make them work! The efforts are worth our time. Again, we will be working in various arenas to maintain and grow our international relationships.
And finally, what is your charge to the members and new Fellows (FCCPs) of CHEST?
We do not yet see clearly whether to expect a massive winter surge of COVID-19 infections. However, it is a reasonably likely possibility. My charge to our members and our new Fellows is first to stay safe, yourself, and to take care of your mental and physical well-being, so that you can be present and functioning at peak levels for your patients. Make sure your family is, likewise, being safe. Secondly, keep doing what you do, which is excellent patient care, excellent teaching, excellent research to push the boundaries of our knowledge. And finally, you’ve seen my ideas of the challenges facing CHEST. I want you to survey, yourself, and tell me what you think our challenges, goals, and responsibilities should be. And if anything I’ve said resonates with you, volunteer to help us address our challenges and keep CHEST the professional home that you deserve and that you will never want to leave. CHEST wants you and needs you. We are so happy you are with us!
CHEST President-Elect Steven Q. Simpson, MD, FCCP, is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Kansas. He is also senior advisor to the Solving Sepsis initiative of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
As we greet our new incoming CHEST President, we asked him for a few thoughts about his upcoming presidential year. He kindly offered these responses:
What would you like to accomplish as President of CHEST?
This is an interesting question, because a global pandemic and other developments in our world dictate that our organizational goals must adapt to a landscape that has shifted in recent months. My goals as President are somewhat different from what I stated when I ran for the office.
1. First, I will build on the efforts of my predecessors to ensure that CHEST is an inclusive and anti-racist organization. All CHEST members must have equal opportunities within our organization to advance their lives and their careers, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, or gender. My goal is to examine our structures for participation and advancement to positions of leadership in the organization and to evaluate our educational and research offerings, all with the purpose of discovering and remedying places where we have been blind to our own systematic bias. Further, CHEST must advocate for and lead others to advocate for equality, for equal access to medical care, and for policies that promote them. We must be leaders in this arena, through both our voice and our actions.
2. We will build on CHEST’s new initiative to support the wellness of our members and to help us all perform at our best, day in and day out. I hope for our newly established Wellness Center to become a frequent stop for all CHEST members, myself included, to help us to sustain ourselves through the pandemic and beyond.
3. We must maintain both the quality and the feel of our educational and research offerings during this time when we cannot come together in person. My goal for us is that we use this time to embrace remote and nontemporally synchronous education, ie, web-based education, to make CHEST’s offerings the best anywhere. In the remainder of the 21st century, digital transformation of teaching and learning will advance tremendously, and our creative use of technology will become a norm. I hope that we never abandon in-person meetings, but using technology to improve information transfer and augmenting our members’ continuing education are clearly here to stay. My goal for us is that we maintain an atmosphere to both our in-person meetings and our remotely delivered meetings that makes generating new knowledge and learning what we generate enjoyable, even fun. I believe our digital transformation will make some interesting things possible over time.
4. My overall goal for CHEST in the coming year is not that we “make it through” the current pandemic, but that we emerge stronger, smarter, and better for the experience, and prepared for the next challenge(s).
Before COVID-19, I had goals for my presidency, and these issues have not disappeared. CHEST needs to be user- friendly for our members, from our website, to the ways in which we deliver education, to the type of research we develop and promote. On the research side, our members have long been interested in clinical research that informs and improves our patient care. My goal is to double down on promoting, supporting, and presenting research that serves exactly this purpose. We are growing our team-based education, and I have a special goal for CHEST to become the home for pulmonary, critical care, and sleep advanced practice providers. I care tremendously about our international members, and I will promote both international growth and catering of CHEST’s offerings to benefit our international members.
What do you consider to be the greatest strength of CHEST, and how will you build upon this during your Presidency?
There is zero doubt that CHEST’s greatest strength is the people who gravitate to our organization. From pure clinicians to academicians; from clinical researchers to clinical educators to outcomes mavens—all levels of the health-care team. At every level of this organization are members who all want to be better at what we do, who want to figure out the ways for doing that, who want to explore the boundaries of what that means, and who want to help others to do the same. That goes, as well, for the professional staff who support the members, and who have adopted the motto, “CRUSH lung disease,” because they share our mission and are here to help us do it better.
The absolutely most enjoyable thing about leadership is having the opportunity to survey the landscape and see who’s looking for opportunity, who’s a rising star, who’s looking for people to mentor, then matching those people with opportunities and with jobs to do. Good people who are motivated by the right principles rise to the occasion. My job as President is to help ensure that the organization via the CHEST Board of Regents is addressing the correct problems with the right vision, to identify the right talented and dedicated members for the jobs, and then to support and stay out of their way as they make the vision a reality.
What are some challenges facing CHEST, and how will you address these challenges?
The major immediate challenges facing CHEST are pandemic-related, in terms of helping to ensure the well-being of our members, and in helping them to address the inequities and disparities in care for our patients of color, who have been hardest hit by the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. I addressed these with my goals, above. To be more specific, though, our board will be using various techniques, including dialogue with our members of color, to understand and address our own implicit biases, so that we can achieve the correct vision and tone of inclusion for all of our members. Also addressed in my goals is the isolation from one another that we are all experiencing because of the pandemic. This situation makes it difficult for us to maintain the style and tone of live learning experiences that our CHEST members are accustomed to. The challenge is to develop materials that can be interactive at a distance, and this likely includes gamification of educational content and employing virtual reality. CHEST Innovations is already working in this arena, and it will be our job as member volunteers to support those efforts. The isolation affects our international members, as well, and our ability to travel to maintain relationships. The nice thing is that web conferencing works just as well for international meetings as for meetings in the US, although somebody often has to go to bed very late or get up very early in the morning to make them work! The efforts are worth our time. Again, we will be working in various arenas to maintain and grow our international relationships.
And finally, what is your charge to the members and new Fellows (FCCPs) of CHEST?
We do not yet see clearly whether to expect a massive winter surge of COVID-19 infections. However, it is a reasonably likely possibility. My charge to our members and our new Fellows is first to stay safe, yourself, and to take care of your mental and physical well-being, so that you can be present and functioning at peak levels for your patients. Make sure your family is, likewise, being safe. Secondly, keep doing what you do, which is excellent patient care, excellent teaching, excellent research to push the boundaries of our knowledge. And finally, you’ve seen my ideas of the challenges facing CHEST. I want you to survey, yourself, and tell me what you think our challenges, goals, and responsibilities should be. And if anything I’ve said resonates with you, volunteer to help us address our challenges and keep CHEST the professional home that you deserve and that you will never want to leave. CHEST wants you and needs you. We are so happy you are with us!
CHEST President-Elect Steven Q. Simpson, MD, FCCP, is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Kansas. He is also senior advisor to the Solving Sepsis initiative of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
As we greet our new incoming CHEST President, we asked him for a few thoughts about his upcoming presidential year. He kindly offered these responses:
What would you like to accomplish as President of CHEST?
This is an interesting question, because a global pandemic and other developments in our world dictate that our organizational goals must adapt to a landscape that has shifted in recent months. My goals as President are somewhat different from what I stated when I ran for the office.
1. First, I will build on the efforts of my predecessors to ensure that CHEST is an inclusive and anti-racist organization. All CHEST members must have equal opportunities within our organization to advance their lives and their careers, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, or gender. My goal is to examine our structures for participation and advancement to positions of leadership in the organization and to evaluate our educational and research offerings, all with the purpose of discovering and remedying places where we have been blind to our own systematic bias. Further, CHEST must advocate for and lead others to advocate for equality, for equal access to medical care, and for policies that promote them. We must be leaders in this arena, through both our voice and our actions.
2. We will build on CHEST’s new initiative to support the wellness of our members and to help us all perform at our best, day in and day out. I hope for our newly established Wellness Center to become a frequent stop for all CHEST members, myself included, to help us to sustain ourselves through the pandemic and beyond.
3. We must maintain both the quality and the feel of our educational and research offerings during this time when we cannot come together in person. My goal for us is that we use this time to embrace remote and nontemporally synchronous education, ie, web-based education, to make CHEST’s offerings the best anywhere. In the remainder of the 21st century, digital transformation of teaching and learning will advance tremendously, and our creative use of technology will become a norm. I hope that we never abandon in-person meetings, but using technology to improve information transfer and augmenting our members’ continuing education are clearly here to stay. My goal for us is that we maintain an atmosphere to both our in-person meetings and our remotely delivered meetings that makes generating new knowledge and learning what we generate enjoyable, even fun. I believe our digital transformation will make some interesting things possible over time.
4. My overall goal for CHEST in the coming year is not that we “make it through” the current pandemic, but that we emerge stronger, smarter, and better for the experience, and prepared for the next challenge(s).
Before COVID-19, I had goals for my presidency, and these issues have not disappeared. CHEST needs to be user- friendly for our members, from our website, to the ways in which we deliver education, to the type of research we develop and promote. On the research side, our members have long been interested in clinical research that informs and improves our patient care. My goal is to double down on promoting, supporting, and presenting research that serves exactly this purpose. We are growing our team-based education, and I have a special goal for CHEST to become the home for pulmonary, critical care, and sleep advanced practice providers. I care tremendously about our international members, and I will promote both international growth and catering of CHEST’s offerings to benefit our international members.
What do you consider to be the greatest strength of CHEST, and how will you build upon this during your Presidency?
There is zero doubt that CHEST’s greatest strength is the people who gravitate to our organization. From pure clinicians to academicians; from clinical researchers to clinical educators to outcomes mavens—all levels of the health-care team. At every level of this organization are members who all want to be better at what we do, who want to figure out the ways for doing that, who want to explore the boundaries of what that means, and who want to help others to do the same. That goes, as well, for the professional staff who support the members, and who have adopted the motto, “CRUSH lung disease,” because they share our mission and are here to help us do it better.
The absolutely most enjoyable thing about leadership is having the opportunity to survey the landscape and see who’s looking for opportunity, who’s a rising star, who’s looking for people to mentor, then matching those people with opportunities and with jobs to do. Good people who are motivated by the right principles rise to the occasion. My job as President is to help ensure that the organization via the CHEST Board of Regents is addressing the correct problems with the right vision, to identify the right talented and dedicated members for the jobs, and then to support and stay out of their way as they make the vision a reality.
What are some challenges facing CHEST, and how will you address these challenges?
The major immediate challenges facing CHEST are pandemic-related, in terms of helping to ensure the well-being of our members, and in helping them to address the inequities and disparities in care for our patients of color, who have been hardest hit by the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. I addressed these with my goals, above. To be more specific, though, our board will be using various techniques, including dialogue with our members of color, to understand and address our own implicit biases, so that we can achieve the correct vision and tone of inclusion for all of our members. Also addressed in my goals is the isolation from one another that we are all experiencing because of the pandemic. This situation makes it difficult for us to maintain the style and tone of live learning experiences that our CHEST members are accustomed to. The challenge is to develop materials that can be interactive at a distance, and this likely includes gamification of educational content and employing virtual reality. CHEST Innovations is already working in this arena, and it will be our job as member volunteers to support those efforts. The isolation affects our international members, as well, and our ability to travel to maintain relationships. The nice thing is that web conferencing works just as well for international meetings as for meetings in the US, although somebody often has to go to bed very late or get up very early in the morning to make them work! The efforts are worth our time. Again, we will be working in various arenas to maintain and grow our international relationships.
And finally, what is your charge to the members and new Fellows (FCCPs) of CHEST?
We do not yet see clearly whether to expect a massive winter surge of COVID-19 infections. However, it is a reasonably likely possibility. My charge to our members and our new Fellows is first to stay safe, yourself, and to take care of your mental and physical well-being, so that you can be present and functioning at peak levels for your patients. Make sure your family is, likewise, being safe. Secondly, keep doing what you do, which is excellent patient care, excellent teaching, excellent research to push the boundaries of our knowledge. And finally, you’ve seen my ideas of the challenges facing CHEST. I want you to survey, yourself, and tell me what you think our challenges, goals, and responsibilities should be. And if anything I’ve said resonates with you, volunteer to help us address our challenges and keep CHEST the professional home that you deserve and that you will never want to leave. CHEST wants you and needs you. We are so happy you are with us!