By Beth Bales
In order to recognize the diverse ways members interact and consume information, a new Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Communications Committee, replete with three subcommittees, has been formed. The move is designed to allow the SVS to coordinate and expand the ways in which it communicates to its members and the world.
The three subcommittees include the existing Public and Professional Outreach Committee led by Joseph Mills, MD; Social Media, led by Meryl Logan, MD; and Website Development, directed by Paul Crisostomo, MD.
The SVS secretary, currently Amy Reed, MD, will chair the overall Communications Committee. It will focus on high-level communications strategy and help manage and integrate communications across all of the SVS, including print and digital publications, social media, the SVS website and SVSConnect, said Reed.
The expansion is a result both of continued growth of the Society and creation of new communications vehicles born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when member communications took on increased importance.
“We had to focus on and communicate with members quickly on many important topics, seemingly all at once,” said Reed. “We experienced the sudden halt to elective surgeries, which affected members’ livelihoods; government response and assistance; cancellation of the 2020 Vascular Annual Meeting, and much more.”
To keep members informed of rapidly changing news, in late March 2020 the SVS began publishing the biweekly Pulse electronic newsletter every week, frequently with a lead-off note from thenpresident Kim Hodgson, MD. SVS leadership met weekly to consider important topics that needed to be addressed, how to ease members’ concerns and to make suggestions for augmenting communications. Pulse has resumed its biweekly schedule but the need to integrate communications has not disappeared, said Ronald L. Dalman, MD, SVS president.
“We have a host of ways to reach our members, and need all of them to reach a diverse population of members who all communicate via slightly different manners,” he said.
Other vehicles include the bi-monthly DC Update newsletter, the monthly Vascular Trainee; biweekly Future Vascular Surgeons; occasional and potentially monthly SVS Foundation communications; eblasts; Vascular Specialist; Journal of Vascular Surgery publications and the new Audible Bleeding podcast. The committees’ charges include overseeing the continued dissemination of the branding campaign; work with the PPO Committee on strategic development around news and media, rapid response and crisis communication; work to develop strategies to reach medical students and residents; strategic oversight of increased social media engagement and new website development; to provide consultation to SVS staff developing communications content via all channels; and developing media materials on items of interest across the Society, the medical community, and to consumers.
Among the members of the Communications Committee are the editors and hosts of Audible Bleeding (Sharif Ellozy, MD); Vascular Specialist (Malachi Sheahan III, MD); Town Halls (Kim Hodgson, MD); VAM Program (Matthew Eagleton, MD) and Membership (Afshin Molkara, MD) committees; the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion associate editor for the Journal of Vascular Surgery (Ulka Sachdev-Ost, MD); and the Coalition for Optimization of Vascular Surgery Trainees and Students (Chelsea Dorsey, MD).