Academic Director Address 2018

EuGMS Academic Director Address by Prof Mirko Petrovic

Dear Colleagues,

I am addressing you in my capacity of the newly appointed Academic Director of the EuGMS for the period 2018-2021.

The current Academic board (AB) consists of nine members besides the Academic Director (Jürgen Bauer, Germany, Antonio Cherubini, Italy, Alfonso Cruz Jentoft, Spain, Tomasz Grodzicki, Poland, Kiyoka Kinugawa Bourron, France, Anastassia Kossioni, Greece, Eija Lönnroos, Finland, Francesco Mattace Raso, the Netherlands and Avan Aihie Sayer, the United Kingdom). It makes a well balanced mix of experienced and new members, established and emerging academics, representatives from different European regions with involvement of the next three host countries of the EuGMS congress.

The main focus of the activity of AB in the next four years, in concordance with the mission of our society and the outstanding track record which has been realized by Athanase Benetos as academic director and the previous members of the Academic board, will be promoting education and continuing professional development, and in particular the organisation of an annual congress. In addition, the AB will keep up the high level of scientific and educational activity of our Special Interest Groups (SIG) and Task & Finish Groups. The current SIGs and T&F groups will be to a certain extent reshuffled and organized around key geriatric domains in order to optimize their structure, mutual connectivity and scientific output, where possible in collaboration with other partner societies and organisations.

We intend to establish a EuGMS library in which all publications under the umbrella of our society will be registered. The AB will also promote submission of scientific contributions of our SIGs and T&F groups to European Geriatric Medicine, the journal and one of the windows of our society to the scientific world.

AB will in the coming period also closely collaborate with our recently established “Global Europe Initiative” (GEI) group in spreading the educational activities and high professional standards across European continent and in particular in the countries where geriatric medicine is still emerging or has yet to obtain well-established professional and scientific independence and recognition.

The activity of the AB will be based on expertise, open-mindedness, interactivity, mutual complementarity and scientific productivity of its members in order to drive forward change and bring professional and scientific benefits for geriatricians across Europe.

I am looking forward to meeting you in Berlin!

Mirko Petrovic, Academic Director 2018-2021

08.04.2018