Strategic Plan

Developing the new ISPD 2015 – 2018 Strategic Plan

Igna Van den Veyver, MD
President-Elect

With emerging new technologies and shifting paradigms in fetal imaging, fetal care, and genomic diagnostic technologies and medicine, the ISPD Board of Directors recognizes the importance of new educational and professional initiatives to serve the needs of ISPD members and a wider community of stakeholders with overlapping interests. Thus, to promote worldwide ethical and evidence-based medical care and scientific research and education of the highest quality in the emerging era of Fetal Precision Medicine, the ISPD Board of Directors began work this year on a new four-year strategic plan, “ISPD 2015-2018.”

ISPD was formally founded in 1995 and just celebrated its 20th anniversary. During the 20 years of its existence, the Society has witnessed and reflected on the rapidly changing field of fetal care and genetics mainly through its international conferences and its official journal Prenatal Diagnosis. The international conference was hosted every other year through 2012 and has been an annual event since 2012. As a testimony to the growing interest in our field, the 2015 international conference in Washington, DC had a record number of participants, and the journal significantly increased its impact factor and has risen in prominence among obstetrics and gynecology and genetics peer-reviewed journals. This growth of ISPD paired with the dramatic development of new knowledge is exciting but brings about new challenges for ISPD.

The strategic planning process began in the summer of 2014, when the concept for this initiative was first introduced by outgoing president, Jan van Lith. After preliminary work in early 2015, the Board of Directors met during a two-day retreat hosted by the Executive Director Elliott Graham and her staff at the Custom Management Group offices in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the ISPD Headquarters is located. As a first step in the process, we completed an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We then defined the new mission and vision statements of the ISPD, which can now be found on our newly-designed website.

The Mission Statement of ISPD reads: “By advancing the science and practice of genetics and fetal care worldwide, we will promote the health of children, their mothers and their families.” Our vision is that: “Evidence-based practice and culturally sensitive preconception and prenatal screening, diagnostics and therapy shall be available to all families.”

The ISPD Board of Directors then developed the following four strategic goals for “ISPD 2015 – 2018,” which can also be found here :
1. Advance the science of all aspects of preconception and prenatal genetics, screening, diagnosis and therapy.
2. Promote knowledge of preconception and prenatal genetics, screening, diagnosis and therapy globally.
3. Advocate the ethical practice of evidence-based preconception and prenatal genetics, screening, diagnosis and therapy.
4. Encourage communication of information and experience among members and with the public.

We are now well underway with developing objectives, strategies, and tactics for each of these goals and will update the membership regularly on the process and accomplishments. We encourage you to check the website often for new features and information, and we will also summarize the progress in this Newsletter. We hope to engage members as we move forward and will periodically ask for your opinion and seek our feedback through surveys. We hope you will respond to these as they will help us make your Society better. There will also be future opportunities for those interested to work with us on defined committees and projects and we will announce them when they arise. As usual, we welcome your feedback to help us make your society better fulfill your professional needs.