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Past President Messages

2020 – 2021 President's Message - Jason Hitkari, MD

Dear Friends and Colleagues,
 
Jason_Photo.jpgI am looking forward to serving as the 67th President for the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society ! I feel especially fortunate to take on this role as we develop our Strategic Plan for the next five years. I am thrilled to work alongside our Board, Executive Director, SIG Chairs, members, stakeholders, and Champion Sponsors to establish the main priorities of the CFAS. Throughout the past five years, we have done a tremendous amount of work to further our field of assisted reproduction. With your help, we can make CFAS even better.
 
As we enter a new CFAS year, I want to reflect on some of the challenges that arose over the course of 2020 and recognize how our society overcame them. When COVID-19 forced the cancellation,or postponement, of many of our events,including our 2020 Annual Meeting, the CFAS Board and team stepped up to offer extra virtual sessions; released a multitude of guidance and support documents, with the help of our Special Interest Groups; and even created fun challenges to keep members creative and engaged during the lockdown. I would like to thank every one of you for your commitment to supporting each other and all patients, while continuing to provide top-notch fertility care, even as the global pandemic raged on around you. I am impressed by your dedication to your work and the creative solutions you implemented to modify your offices, clinics, and labs to keep patients and staff safe as society gradually reopened. It is these very characteristics that I want to see reflected in our Strategic Plan surveys, focus groups, and interviews. You all have something to contribute. This year is truly your chance to let us know, as a Society, what direction we should follow to better serve as the voice of reproductive specialists in Canada.

Through collaboration with the Scientific Program Committee, I am working diligently at building a comprehensive, diverse, and sensational Annual Meeting program. With everything 2020 has thrown at our membership, I want to put my best effort into hosting a meeting that really celebrates our members’ work and contributions to this field. The theme of the meeting is “Thriving Through Change: From Virtual Medicine and Viruses to Technology and Techniques”. If anything, our experience coping with COVID-19 during the past months has certainly shown our ability to accept change, adapt accordingly, and ultimately thrive. I am so proud of what our Society has accomplished amid a pandemic and cannot wait to see what it will achieve this year and beyond.

There are many other goals I am hoping we can accomplish over the year, including improving governance within the CFAS; increasing connectivity and communication between SIG members; and continuing to help provide guidance through the pandemic.

I am looking forward to working with all of you!

Sincerely,
Jason Hitkari, MD
CFAS President 2020-2021

2019 – 2020 President's Message - Eileen McMahon, RN(EC), MN, PNC(C)

Dear Friends and Colleagues,
EileenM
I am very pleased to invite you, as the first Nurse President of the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society, to the 66th CFAS Annual Meeting in September 2020 in Toronto – home of the NBA Champion Raptors!
The Annual Meeting is a 2.5-day event attracting over 700 Canadian and international attendees. The Meeting’s goal is to bring together bright minds to provide talks that are focused on the conference theme of Quality and Safety in Assisted Reproduction: Adopt, Adapt, or Discard. This theme was chosen because whether you are new to the field of fertility or a seasoned veteran, there are always opportunities for learning, exploration and improvement. The meeting will include posters, plenaries, panels and concurrent sessions with a variety of speakers and topics to inform and inspire you.
September is a wonderful time to visit Toronto as there are fewer crowds than in the summer and the weather is still quite pleasant. Canada’s largest metropolis has so much to offer, from historical sites to culinary delights and lots in between. Please see this Toronto Visitor Guide for more information: https://www.seetorontonow.com/maps-and-guides/toronto-visitor-guide/
If you would like to tweet about this event, please use #CFAS2020.
Looking forward to seeing you all at the Annual Meeting!

Sincerely,

Eileen McMahon
CFAS President 2019-2020

2018 – 2019 President's Message - Clifford Librach, MD

Clifford-LibrachMD.jpgDear CFAS Members and Colleagues:
 
It is an honor, and privilege to serve as the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society's 65th President.  We are proud that our membership is growing, now over 800 members!  Our growth showcases that the CFAS is being recognized as an authority in reproductive medicine, and we are in the position to help influence the future of reproductive care in Canada.
 
I am excited for what the year has to bring as we prepare to celebrate our accomplishments, and successes over the past 65 years at our 2019 Annual Conference in Ottawa.  The title to our meeting is fitting for this occasion, "It Takes a Village to Create an Embryo", as with our organization, being a multidisciplinary society, each and every one of you play an important role in the success towards patients achieving their fertility goals.  
 
We will continue our efforts to engage with the federal government and Health Canada, along with our commitment to produce timely Position Statements, and continue our dedicated efforts towards the development of high quality Clinical Practice Guidelines. We will continue our efforts in supporting our Special Interest Groups, on their various projects. We are also engaging important and mutually beneficial alliances with sister organizations such as the Society for the Study of Reproduction (SSR), the SOGC and the ASRM.
 
I am very thrilled to welcome our very talented, new Executive Director, Goldi Gill, who has been working tirelessly in the first six months of her tenure on new initiatives to improve and augment the organization's structure, bylaws and governance.   She, and her staff, have also been actively working on increasing membership value through exclusive corporate benefits to our membership.  Goldi is also overseeing the launch of our new website by the end of this year, along with an interactive, and user friendly membership portal. 
 
As your president, it's important that I hear from those of you with comments and suggestions of how we can better serve your needs as an organization. Please do not hesitate to contact myself directly or Goldi at any time.   I will keep in touch with all of you throughout the year with messages to update you on new developments that are important to the society and its members.
 
I look forward to seeing everyone at our 65th Annual Conference from September 19th - 21st, 2019 in Ottawa - it aims to be an amazing event, with very prominent and engaging speakers from Canada, and around the world. There will also be some special events to commemorate this special Anniversary of our Society.
 
Yours truly,
 
Clifford Librach, MD, FRCS(C), FACOG(REI)
President 2018 – 2019

 

2017 – 2018 President's Message - Jason Min, MD

It is an honor to be in service of the CFAS, our unique society which represents a diverse group of professionals dedicated to the safe and effective delivery of reproductive care to our patients.

Through the countless hours put forth by many of our dedicated members in the execution of our strategic plan, the CFAS is being recognized as the authority in reproductive medicine, and is in a position to help influence the future of reproductive care in Canada. The primary objective during my presidency is to continue to strengthen our partnership with governments, provincial medical colleges, the public at large, and other stakeholders, in order to help shape policy and regulation to the benefit of our patients. We will continue to engage with the federal government and Health Canada, produce timely Position Statements, and direct our resources towards the development of high quality Clinical Practice Guidelines.

In the interests of self-determination, the CFAS will continue to support the initiatives originating from the Special Interest Groups: the ART Lab and Andrology SIGs in their efforts towards implementing a certification examination and maintenance of competency program, and the Nursing SIG’s plan to establish fertility-specific nursing competencies.

Finally, we will continue to provide educational opportunities to our members through web-based learning, select regional meetings and workshops, the Administrative SIG’s inaugural Leadership Program being offered through York University, and an interesting and thought-provoking 2018 annual meeting in Montreal: Controversies in Assisted Reproduction.

Yours truly,

Jason Min, MD
President 2017 – 2018


2014 - 2015 President's Message - Dr. Neal Mahutte

President’s Greeting

NM Photo

It is truly an honor and a privilege to be the CFAS President. Now comprised of over 700 members the CFAS represents physicians, scientists, embryologists, andrologists, nurses, ethicists, attorneys, psychologists, administrators and other professionals focused on reproductive medicine in Canada.

My main goal this year as president will be to create value for CFAS membership. We will be revamping our website and updating our strategic plan. A number of new CFAS Position Statements are in the works. In addition, several small regional CFAS meetings will occur in the coming year to address various subjects such as the provincial funding in Quebec, best administrative practices, and some of the ethical issues surrounding access to fertility treatment. The embryology and andrology Special Interest Group is continuing its efforts to establish objective criteria for accrediting new members and keeping laboratory credentials up to date. Finally, the Clinical Practice Guideline Committee will continue to develop practical documents to guide reproductive care.

In addition, during this presidential year we hope to introduce a platform that will facilitate prospective multicentre randomized clinical trials. In Canada we now perform over 25,000 IVF cycles per year. Given that these occur across approximately 34 IVF centres, wouldn’t it be great if we could use this capacity to help answer salient questions in our field? The CARTR-BORN database already collects comprehensive information about all our IVF cycles, and the CFAS should be able to create a structure for formulating hypotheses, establishing inclusion/exclusion criteria and sharing protocols/consents. It would then be up to individual IVF centers to decide for themselves if they wish to participate.

In 2015 our annual meeting will take place in Halifax at the Marriot Harborfront Hotel from October 1-4. The theme of the meeting is State of the Art Fertility Care- the Quest for Excellence. The program for this meeting was constructed using direct feedback from our 2014 membership survey. An exciting array of subjects will be addressed by an elite group of internationally renowned speakers, and I hope that all CFAS members will be able to attend.

Sincerely yours,

Neal Mahutte MD
CFAS President 2014-2015