Dear All

It is my privilege to be the President of a professional organization which has as our goal the advancement of science and practice to improve the health of children who require transplantation in the worldwide community, and to advocate for their rights.

As 2019 draws to a close and we enter the Holiday season, it is a good time to reflect on what we have achieved this year. The highlight has been the very successful IPTA 2019 Congress in Vancouver hosted by Anne Dipchand as President, with over 500 delegates, which was a wonderful opportunity for sharing of knowledge and networking with friends and colleagues.

The Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) produced an excellent academic content under Catherin Parker’s wise guidance with the Local Organising Committee under Tom Blydt-Hansen. Amongst their other duties, they also produced spectacular weather in Vancouver for the duration of the meeting. A special thanks to Isabel Stengler and her team for ‘making it all happen’ and to Sondra Livingston, Robert Colarusso, and the rest of the TTS team for all of their efforts in making this a successful meeting.

Our journal Pediatric Transplantation has also had a successful year under the leadership of our new editors Burkhard Tönshoff and Sharon Bartosh. Since this meeting, our IPTA Council has had some new members rotate onto the Council to join our wise group to ensure collective international input. I am grateful to those who have rotated off and know that they have been available for ongoing input when needed, and I am also excited about the new members and the talents that they bring to the organisation.

The various IPTA sub-committees have been hard at work with new goals and objectives, amongst the highlights including:

• Education Committee facilitating the first TTS-IPTA joint webinar on Epitope Matching;
• Ethics committee producing thought provoking case discussions and planning ethics-related position statements;
• Outreach committee relaunching their program and developing a collaborative program between Dallas, USA and Bangalore, India, launching in 2020 and exploring multi-lingual patient education resources;
• Membership committee developing new initiatives to increase membership and planning new opportunities for enhanced engagement of members including senior and junior members interaction;
• Allied Health committee providing an excellent pre-congress symposium at the IPTA 2019 meeting together with large numbers of Allied Health colleagues also attending the main congress, developing a survey and planning webinars in the future;
• Publications committee producing our informative newsletters, planned development of a peer mentoring program, and collaboration with the editors of Pediatric Transplantation;
• Infectious Disease committee continuing to be prolific in their aims to spread knowledge about ID in pediatric transplantation with a successful EBV consensus meeting, a number of publications including a PJP survey, Live virus vaccines as well as collaboration with IPTA colleagues across the globe;
• We would also take this opportunity to welcome our newest committee, the Communications committee, who are responsible for developing our social media communications as well as the optimization of a newer IPTA Website.

I would like to thank the IPTA Council as well as the Committees and their respective chairs for being so active and providing valuable input into our organization.

We look forward to our next IPTA congress, 17 – 21 April 2021 in Prague, and thank Lars Pape and George Mazariegos, together with Catherin and Isabel from TTS, who are already hard at work with the SAC in planning this meeting, as well as our local host, Tomas Seeman.

Finally I would like to thank the Executive Committee with Anne Dipchand (Past President) as a wise counsel, Carlos Esquivel (President Elect) for his enthusiasm and support and Lars Pape (Secretary/Treasurer) for his fresh ideas and treasurer input over this year.

I would also like to thank Katie Tait from TTS for her significant administrative support and never-ending cheerfulness.

On behalf of this group, I would like to wish all our members a Happy Holiday season hoping that you do get some ‘time-out’, and especially wishing you special time with your loved ones.

Thank you for all you do in your daily capacity to improve the health of all the pediatric patients in your care, and furthering the mission of our society.

May you all have an exciting start for 2020!

Best wishes

Mignon McCulloch
IPTA President