Our Scientific Council: A Platform for Planning and Engagement

As a primary venue for engaging the group’s extended leadership team, we have assembled a SWOG Scientific Council. This Council meets monthly, consolidating several previous leadership meetings into a single session, though on a somewhat less frequent cadence. 

It brings together the members of SWOG’s former executive advisory committee with the full complement of committee chairs (who previously had a separate monthly meeting). 

The Scientific Council’s goals primarily concern planning and executing strategy at the whole-group level. SWOG needs great ideas for trials, but great ideas won’t go far without thoughtful strategy behind them. 

We also see the Council as a forum for fostering inter-committee communication and for sharing best practices. Many of SWOG’s committees face similar challenges, and individual committees have developed innovative and highly effective approaches to tackling some of these challenges. The Council can be a venue for learning from each other’s successes.

Never ones to cave to superstition, we convened our inaugural session of this new Council on Friday the 13th (of March).

It was our first opportunity since becoming SWOG chairs to get pretty much all group-level and committee leadership in the same room together (at least virtually). Attendees included our group statistician, vice chairs, executive officers, and the chairs and co-chairs of all committees – research, modality, research support, and administrative – along with some senior staff members.

It was also a chance to introduce a major new leadership role for SWOG, that of chief medical officer (CMO), and to discuss how it’s being integrated into the group’s governance and operational structure. We’re extremely fortunate that Dr. Charles Blanke, SWOG group chair emeritus, has agreed to serve as the group’s first CMO. We’ll say more about this new leadership position in an upcoming Front Line.

And we’ll say more about much of the above – and will introduce the full cast of leaders outlined here – at the SWOG spring group meeting’s plenary session (2-4 pm PT, Friday, May 1st, San Francisco Hyatt Regency and online via Zoom). 

We look forward to seeing you – and hearing from you – there and then.
 

Biking for SWOG: Tour de Scottsdale

A hardy group of SWOG members, supporters, and staff will be in Arizona this weekend for this year’s installment of the Tour de Scottsdale, a fundraising bike-a-thon. 

Led by Dr. Parminder Singh, and supported by The Hope Foundation, the SWOG contingent has become a fundraising juggernaut over the last few years, and this year’s pledges have already exceeded $35,000. 

With all contributions supporting our Leadership and Professional Development (LEAP-D) course, it’s definitely worth considering a pledge! The event is tomorrow, March 28th, so don’t wait.