Serving as ABR Board President a Highlight of Career
by Vincent P. Mathews, MD, ABR President
2022;15(4):2
At the end of the September 2022 ABR Board of Governors meeting in Boston, I will conclude my term as ABR president. At that time Dr. Bob Barr will become president, and Dr. Cheri Canon will become president-elect. There will also be changes with the Board of Trustees: Dr. Matt Podgorsak, one of our medical physics trustees, will replace Dr. Don Flemming as Board of Trustees chair. Dr. Flemming will continue as a member of the Board of Governors and will be replaced as MSK trustee by Dr. Dan Davis.
It has been an honor to be the ABR President since June 1, 2020. My first official communication as president was to notify our community that we were transitioning to remote exams because of the uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic. I am very proud of the ABR staff and volunteers who have performed incredible work to successfully develop and launch the remote platform. I am also gratified by the engagement of diplomates and leaders of key radiology societies during this transition. Their feedback continues to be invaluable as we critically evaluate our processes for providing a rigorous and credible assessment of our candidates and diplomates in order to meet the ABR mission to serve the public and the profession.
Being an ABR volunteer has been one of the greatest highlights of my professional career. In 1999, I began serving the ABR as a member of the Neuroradiology Maintenance of Certification (MOC) committee chaired by Dr. Bob Lukin, and helped produce the first ABR MOC exams, which were delivered in Louisville in the spring of 2003. I subsequently served as the committee chair and became a Neuroradiology trustee in 2011. In 2015, when the ABR changed its governance structure to have a smaller strategic board (the Board of Governors) and a larger representative board overseeing exam development (the Board of Trustees), I served as one of the initial ABR governors focused on certification policy. As part of this work, I was appointed to the ABMS Committee on Continuing Certification, which has representatives from all 24 Member Boards as well as public members and oversees all the boards’ MOC programs. One of this committee’s charges was to respond to the recommendations of the Continuing Certification Vision Commission and develop new standards for Continuing Certification that will be implemented in January 2024. I served as ABR president-elect while Dr. Brent Wagner was president from 2018-2020, during which time the ABR launched Online Longitudinal Assessment (OLA), which has been a well-received enhancement of our Continuing Certification program.
I am so appreciative of the opportunity to be ABR President as well as to be engaged in its important work over the past 20 years. A particularly rewarding aspect of my time with the ABR has been developing relationships with so many wonderful people, both volunteers and staff, who have also been committed to the ABR mission. I will remain involved as a volunteer on the Neuroradiology OLA committee and am confident the organization will continue to thrive under the leadership of Bob, Cheri, the rest of the Governors, and Brent, our Executive Director.
