Hello SCDM Friends,

The SCDM Board officially meets in person twice a year, and virtually twice a year.  These meetings are jam packed with discussions around running the organization.

Below is a summary of some of the items we discussed at our Summer and Fall board meetings.  As you will see after learning about everything we have going on, there are many opportunities to get involved with SCDM including becoming a board member.

1. Mission and Vision – The board is excited about the new vision and mission of SCDM and we time defining out long-term goals based on these changes. We are working on a strategy map to identify measurable objectives that will let us accomplish these goals.

As a reminder, the new mission and vision are:

Mission:  Connect and inspire professionals managing global health data with global education, certification and advocacy

Vision:  Leading innovative applied clinical data science to advance global health research and development

2. Volunteer management program – We discussed the plans to create an onboarding program and training for new volunteers.  This would include an introduction to the resources available to volunteers as well as the structure of our organization.  Volunteers are responsible for developing our GCDMP, for webinars, ccdm exam, as well as helping to plan all our conferences worldwide.
3. Committees – We discussed our committees to determine if the current committees continue to represent our mission and vision.  With all the growth that SCDM experiences sometimes we need to create new committees or realign existing committees.
4. Finances – part of every board meeting is dedicated to reviewing the finances to make sure we are able to deliver all of the SCDM offerings. These finances are reviewed with the entire membership during our business meetings at the annual conference.
5. Global Conference Strategy – Now that SCDM has conferences in India, China, Japan, Europe and the USA, we have put together a single group to help with the oversight of all of these regional events to provide direction, strategy and consistency.
6. Annual Conference 2019 – The annual conference is organized largely by the annual conference committee. As part of the board meeting, we hear an update form the committee and discuss any outstanding issues.
7. Annual conference 2020 and beyond – The planning of upcoming conferences is critical for our continued success. At the board level, we discuss locations for conferences and requirements such as the size of the vendor area and the proximity to a airport or city.  Once we have requirements, we review the options that meet the requirements to select a location.
8. SCDM Alignment of GCDMP development as it relates to Education and Certification committees – All of our content within SCDM needs to be consistent between the various committees and offerings. As our offerings and content change, deliverables of these committees must also change to keep that consistency.
9. Update on the eSource Forum and Innovation committee – These committees are critical to our vision to bring innovative applied clinical data science to advance global health research and development. The board provides direction to these committees on topics and deliverables.
10. Liaison reports – each committee has a board member liaison that is responsible for providing updates to the board on the committee activity and providing direction to the committee to the board. We take time every board meeting to get an update on each committee from the board liaison.

I hope something in here will inspire you to get involved with running the SCDM organization as there are a lot of opportunities!

Jennifer Price,
Secretary
Board of Trustees 2019