Dear Genetic Counselor Community,
The start to 2022 has not been easy: COVID-19 surging, dodging exposures, searching for COVID-19 tests and juggling all our other commitments. Unlike the start of the pandemic, we’re now in a time where the world is pushing forward through it all.
The start of a new year for NSGC means juggling onboarding and orientation for new volunteers, leaders and staff while driving forward a new Strategic Plan and creating Committee charges. We’re questioning processes, policies and trying to leave space and time for the upcoming Justice, Education, Diversity and Inclusion (J.E.D.I.) Action Planning Task Force Recommendations that will be coming midyear.
NSGC’s Committees have been thinking creatively about enacting the new Strategic Plan. NSGC’s “management” committees — groups that manage work in specific areas of our strategy — are Access & Service Delivery, Advocacy Coordinating Committee, Awards, Education, J.E.D.I., Membership, Practice Guidelines, Public Policy, Professional Status Survey (new this year) and Research, Quality and Outcomes. Accomplishing our organizational goals requires each committee to own its plans of work, but also to offer and integrate ideas. I’d like to share some of the Committee leaders’ goals, which were discussed on our inaugural Committee Chair call.
Lauren Ryan (Access & Service Delivery): “Our main goal for this year is to generate a toolkit of resources for genetic counselors who are interested in building various business cases to help better support the membership and increase access to our services.”
Colleen Campbell (Advocacy Coordinating Committee): “The top priority for the ACC is to gain more support and cosponsors for our federal bill, the Access to Genetic Counselor Services Act.”
Rachel Mills (Education): “As always, our primary goal is to deliver high-quality educational content that meets the needs of our diverse membership. Our webinar committee will work closely with NSGC SIGs to present 25 webinars over the course of the year. And our On Demand subcommittee will create packages of previously recorded content to provide more opportunities for access to information that was presented in online courses and at the annual conference.”
Khalida Liaquat (J.E.D.I.): “One of the committee’s first goals will focus on establishing functional definitions. For justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, on the surface, the terms can seem pretty clear, but a deep dive will tell us if we have common ground for this language when we communicate with our partner organizations and our membership.”
Carrie Haverty (Membership): “It’s really great to see the continuing crystallization of the directions that we're heading in with the J.E.D.I Action Planning Task Force work to better attract, support and retain a diverse membership serving our diverse patients. Also, I’m particularly excited to see leadership development being added to the overall charge for the Membership Committee this year.”
Kate Bonini (Public Policy): “We’re strategically revamping how [the Public Policy Committee] reviews, affirms and creates NSGC position statements. We're taking a look at how position statements should be made and why, and also how the process can be made more transparent with our membership. We also want to prioritize stakeholder engagement from the membership on each policy statement we write.”
Andrea Murad (Practice Guidelines): “At the end of the year we were able to finalize a contract with a new group, The Evidence Foundation, that will help provide methodology support to know how to do systematic evidence reviews. This is just not something that most of us have expertise in and so we're learning how to have this new relationship and support.”
Melanie Hardy (Education – Annual Conference): “We have revamped our scoring process to make it clearer and more transparent. We’re really excited to be (hopefully) doing our planning in person in Chicago, which makes a huge difference to be in one room together.”
Julia Wynn (Research, Quality, and Outcomes): “We have a lot of projects on our plate to help to continue to support quality research and the collection of clinical metrics for our membership. A big one we'll be working on is a Research Initiative that will outline a research infrastructure for strategic efforts.”
Vivian Pan (Professional Status Survey): “We are excited to transition from a subcommittee to a committee this year and refresh our work processes with an eye for efficiency and a goal of making the PSS an annual comprehensive survey in order to provide NSGC and its members even more current data on the profession.”
Amanda de Leon (Awards): “Our overarching goal is to select and honor the diverse individuals within the NSGC community using transparent criteria. We hope to continue to create awareness around the organizational scholarships and leadership awards that exist in order to increase access to these opportunities as well as continue to acknowledge the unique work that so many members in the NSGC community are doing.”
We have ambitious goals for 2022 and are driving forward a new Strategic Plan with expected J.E.D.I. action plan changes coming, but we’re still juggling a pandemic. In the year ahead, I’ve asked our leaders to give space to balance all the things we’re juggling and also the necessary time to process and integrate changes. And I hope we all do hard things but also give grace that right now is also very hard.
Overall, I’m really feeling '22,
Heather
Heather Zierhut PhD, MD, CGC is the current President of the National Society of Genetic Counselors. Outside of her work with NSGC, Heather is a professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota.