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President's Letter

 

Dear Colleagues & Friends,

I hope you are all having a pleasant summer. This August SGS Newsletter highlights many outstanding SGS activities, including important committee work, partnering with other societies and upcoming important deadlines.

I was hoping to provide a summary of the recent membership survey but unfortunately, we have had a very low response rate, with only 51 respondents, ~10% of our membership. I prefer to defer any summary until we get more membership engagement and data. The survey came out on the heels of a spam email sent to those SGS members with Gmail accounts, and I suspect this may have adversely affected our response rate. Additionally, I know we all have survey burden and early summer may not be the optimal survey timing, but…

For an opportunity to include your voice, we are re-opening the survey! If you have not done so, please use this link to complete the survey. It will take 5-10 minutes.

In other news, I wanted to highlight the upcoming 2025 SGS Post-Graduate Course in Advanced Gynecologic Surgery, December 7, 2025. The objectives of the course have always been in step with SGS’ Mission of promoting the acquisition of knowledge and improvement of gynecologic surgery skills. The course will be a virtual interactive format again this year, directed by Dr. Lauren Siff. The topics include tips on successful vaginal hysterectomy and managing complex laparoscopic cases. The target audience includes gynecologic surgeons who want the opportunity to review challenging operative cases with expert faculty. The PG Course is open to members and non-members. Please invite and encourage your non-member gynecologic surgery colleagues to attend. 

Historically, the SGS PG course was founded in 1989 by Dr. James Breen, who directed the course in NYC 1989-2003, with four other faculty members. Initially presented as entirely didactic lecture style with Dr. Breen and four other faculty, the course moved to several other cities when it became cost-prohibitive to run in NYC. The directorship transitioned to Dr. Michael Aronson, 2003-2009, including Chicago, San Francisco and New Orleans with the leadership and guidance of Lennie Seigel and Nancy Frankel, PhD. I took over the course in 2010 and after feedback from many attendees, we changed the format in 2013 to include a la carte option for hands-on cadaver dissection with the co-directorship of Dr. Arnold Advincula. A year later, Dr. Rosanne Kho joined the faculty who assumed directorship of the course in 2017, refining the hands-on cadaver course and introducing simulation laparoscopic sutures stations. Courses have been held at several cadaver surgical facilities in Celebration, FL, Tampa, FL as well as courses in San Diego and New Orleans and one international course in Vienna, in 2019. The leadership transition changed to Dr. Cara King, 2020-2023 and to Dr. Lauren Siff in 2024-present. Recent cost changes have led the Board to recommend a trial of on-line courses, allowing faculty and participants to join faculty without travel and with markedly reduced cost and impact on climate change. It also provides the opportunity for increasing the number of participants.

I also wanted to highlight some of the collaborative activities that SGS and our SGS Executive Committee have been involved with over the past several years:

  • ACOG: In 2024, the Board voted to permit the SGS Exec Committee to consider requests to sign on to select American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), Amicus Briefs. Recently, SGS joined ACOG in signing an Amicus Brief on COVID vaccination for children and pregnant women: American Academy of Pediatrics et al v. HHS, challenging the directive of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy to remove children and women form the CDC recommended immunization schedules for the COVID Vaccine.

  • ASRM: We recently joined the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) letter opposing legislative efforts to codify “Restorative Reproductive Medicine” (RRM) as a preferred or mandated approach to infertility care.

  • ACS: We endorsed the American College of Surgeons (ACS) statements on “The Importance of Workplace Support for Pregnancy, Parental Leave, and Lactation for Practicing Surgeons” and “The Importance of Workplace Support for Pregnancy, Parental Leave, and Lactation for Practicing Surgical Trainees”

  • NICHD: We sent a letter to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) with comments to their request for strategic planning.

  • WFRC: Last year, the SGS Board agreed that SGS should pursue membership in the Women First Research Coalition (WFRC) through the American Gynecologic & Obstetrical Society (AGOS). WFRC consists of OBGYN subspecialty organizations with the following purposes:
    • Advocate for the increased federal investment in women’s health research, including for obstetrics and gynecology.
    • Support policies that ensure an adequate women’s health research workforce, including the participation of women in that workforce.
    • Educate federal policymakers and federal executive branch officials about the need for sustained and strengthened investment in women’s health research, as well as the prioritization of research in conditions that are specific to women or those conditions that may present differently in women than men, to improve the health outcomes of women.

In July 2025, SGS agreed to sign on to a letter to preserve research funding for women’s health. The first paragraph of the letter reads, “On behalf of the XX undersigned organizations and individuals with an interest in preserving and building federal investment in research into the health of women, we are writing to ensure that the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) funding and programming are continuing to invest in women’s health research.”

I wanted to end with a reminder that the 52nd Annual Scientific Meeting is March 22-25, 2026, in Phoenix, AZ. I want to thank the Dr. Peter Jeppson and the Scientific Program Committee for all of their outstanding work to date, identifying topics and speakers for what will we hope will be an inspirational meeting.

I wish you all a rejuvenating end of the summer.

Sincerely,

Kris

Kris Strohbehn, MD

SGS President 2025-2026