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Message from the President

Harriet Hopf

Dear WHS Members and Colleagues,

The Annual Meeting, held jointly with the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care (SAWC) in Dallas April 14-17 was a great success, with outstanding scientific sessions and plenty of opportunities for networking and catching up with old friends and making new ones.  You can find a review of highlights on our website at www.woundheal.org. 

Before I talk about my goals and plans for the coming year, I want to thank Luisa DiPietro, DDS, PhD for her outstanding stewardship over the past year.  One major accomplishment was the review and revision of our Mission Statement along with a set of Guiding Principles.  The new principles (see column at right) align with our societal goals and provide a reference point for decisions.  This will help our Committees identify their most important goals and make most efficient use of our hard-working volunteers.  Another of Luisa’s accomplishment came out of a collaboration between the Membership and Website Committees and Crow Segal, our management group, to create an effective way of assigning members to committees.  If you are interested in joining a committee, log into the Members Only section of our web site (www.woundheal.org) and select the “Click here to join a committee!” button.

WHS Mission and Guiding Principles

Mission: Improve wound healing outcomes through science, professional education, and communication by:

  • • Leading multi-disciplinary research in wound science and outcomes.
  • • Linking scientists and clinicians to advance wound healing research.
  • • Translating discovery into evidence based clinical outcomes.
  • • Communicating through mentoring, education, publications, and global networking.

Other accomplishments of note:

  • • Congratulations and welcome to our new Vice President Paul Liu and new members of the Board of Directors, Gayle Gordillo, Kenneth Liechty, James Tomasek, and Marjana Tomic-Canic.
  • • Thanks to retiring BOD members Chandan Sen, Oluyinka Olutoye, and Laura Bolton.  But don’t think you are done with service to the WHS yet!
  • • Congratulations to Pat Hebda, PhD, recipient of the 2011 Distinguished Service Award.  Pat’s contributions as Editor-in-Chief of our journal, Wound Repair and Regeneration, and Past President have been enormous.
  • • Thanks to Annette Wysocki for bringing the Wound Healing Society Foundation into compliance with the non-profit rules and regulations so that we can move forward with fund-raising to help promote the mission of our society.

In the coming year, I have five major objectives:

  1. 1. Work with our committee chairs to confirm that their ongoing work and new initiatives align with our Mission and Guiding Principles and invest resources in increasing their productivity.
  2. 2. Revitalize less active committees by identifying long term goals and short term projects that align with our Mission and Guiding Principles.
  3. 3. Complete the process of getting our Acute and Chronic Wound Prevention and Treatment Guidelines listed on guidelines.gov and initiate the process of revising the guidelines for publication.
  4. 4. Work with the Wound Healing Foundation to create a business plan for growing their fund-raising program.
  5. 5. The WHS Board of Directors will hold a facilitated Strategic Planning Meeting in November to assess how to keep our annual meeting aligned with our Mission and Guiding Principles.  This is particularly important to inform the negotiations as we approach the end of our current contract with HMP / NACCME (SAWC 2013).

I am grateful for the many contributions of our hard working members.  I look forward to working with you and for you in the coming year.  Please feel free to contact me with your ideas and questions: president@woundheal.org.

With Warm Regards,

Harriet W. Hopf, M.D.

WHS President, 2011-2012

P.S. Don't forget to mark your calendars for our next annual meeting, which will take place on April 19-22, 2012 in Atlanta, Georgia. A preliminary program will be posted on our website at a later date.