First, I wanted to sincerely thank our members for showing up and speaking up at last week’s Town Hall and Annual Business Meeting! I was thrilled to see 800+ of our members attend to hear important updates and accomplish our live vote on the updated Bylaws. One example of near-term impact of your vote is that we can introduce our new International Genetic Counselor/Student Member category in our upcoming membership renewal campaign! We received excellent live questions and feedback from you all, and it gives me continued energy on our work when I see the engagement of so many of you.  

Speaking of engagement, last month I wrote about the upcoming Call for Volunteers, which opened this week! I wanted to highlight some updates for 2026 committees that hopefully will inspire your thoughts on putting your hat in the ring. 

• Access and Service Delivery Committee will now be named ‘Access Committee’ 
  • While this name originally served this committee well given the specific focus on genetic counseling service delivery, the work has evolved over the years to address many different types of access – for example, the focus on all things regarding GC service billing.  
  • The idea of shortening to ‘Access’ still encompasses service delivery but also sets up the expectation that access issues are many and the focus on a particular element may change from year to year.  

As I mentioned, one element of the committee's work is the ongoing efforts regarding our CPT(C) code. We will be looking to continue building our internal volunteer expertise in this arena because this work will always need NSGC’s focus, even after the establishment of our updated code 96041.  

Our CPT Advisor and Access leadership will be working on how we bring this knowledge and build our depth of bench with excited volunteers who want to learn more and contribute in this space. 

• Position Statement Work Group (PSWG): the important work of this group in creating and maintaining our position statement repository will now be divided up into two general categories with work to be enveloped under other committees. The PSWG as it has existed will sunset in favor of this new structure. 
  • The general categories of position statements that NSGC creates are policy-related and clinical/practice-related.
  • To better streamline the work on these topics, the policy-facing statement work will now live under the Advocacy Committee since their work is very related.  
  • The clinical/practice-facing statements will be with the Practice Guidance Committee for the same reason.   

Current PSWG members have been offered the opportunity to move with the work they would prefer to focus on to that committee for 2026, and we look forward to continued work of these volunteers!   

• Advocacy Coordinating Committee will now be named ‘Advocacy Committee’. 
  • Like the Access Committee, the initial work of the Advocacy Coordinating Committee did involve more coordination of efforts regarding our federal bill advocacy as the sole focus.  
  • As mentioned above, this committee will now also encompass position statements in the policy space. 
  • Now with our partners at Faegre Drinker, our government relations firm, we are modernizing our advocacy work. Not only will NSGC have help on the coordination side, but we have worked together this year to identify other key areas of advocacy for which NSGC has an important perspective to contribute.  
  • The name change sets the expectation of an expansive advocacy portfolio and associated work.  

We are excited to expand the work of this committee in 2026 to multiple important advocacy initiatives that will be prioritized by the Board of Directors each year, as well as position statements in related spaces. Without a doubt, our federal effort still at the top of our agenda.

• Practice Guidelines Committee will now be named ‘Practice Guidance Committee’ 
  • The work of this committee is critical to show NSGC’s expertise and perspective in different areas of genetic counseling practice. They produce not only guidelines, but they also produce practice resources.  
  • Now, as I mentioned above, they will also encompass position statements relevant to clinical/practice topics.  
  • Updating the name to ‘guidance’ encompasses all of those areas where our society is contributing our voice.   

Volunteering can be that small choice you make, just by choosing to sign up, that could cause a butterfly effect! 

One of our second year Board members, Yue Guan, discusses her thoughts on the value of volunteering in the video here. Enjoy! 

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