Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco

President's Column

Nanct Rigotti Ten years ago, a small group of visionary scientists working in smoking cessation met to start what has become SRNT. This year, as we celebrate our tenth anniversary, SRNT is by every measure, an extraordinary success. Membership continues to climb and should reach 1000 this year. We launched a successful peer-reviewed journal that is growing in pages and impact. Our most visible single activity, the Annual Meeting, is on track again to break previous records of attendance and research submissions. Increasingly, SRNT is recognized in the larger tobacco control community as a valuable resource for trustworthy evidence to guide and public policy decisions and public health programs.

If Societies were human beings, SRNT would soon be entering adolescence (which my pediatric colleagues tell me begins at age 11). Whether you believe the analogy or not, SRNT is bound to face new challenges over the next years as it matures. We will have to adjust our structures to adjust to our larger size and continue to define our mission and goals. With this last President’s Column, I will take the opportunity to comment on some of the issues we face.

To promote our core mission—fostering research in nicotine and tobacco control—SRNT needs to develop our human resources and ensure that funds are available to support their work. We must nurture our field’s (and SRNT’s) next generation of leaders by supporting professional development activities, especially for newcomers. Our Training and Development Council already sponsors workshops at our Annual Meetings (including the upcoming one). I think we should do more going forward, perhaps learning from the experience of organizations like the Society for Behavioral Medicine, that have made early career development a major strategic goal. At the same time, SRNT needs to keep resources flowing to support our scientific work, especially in the future if (when?) federal budgets get leaner and other private funding sources invest less generously in our field. We need to convince policymakers and funders of the importance of our scientific mission.

We also need to reach out to diversify SRNT’s membership and leadership in demographic categories and in scientific disciplines. SRNT started from a base of clinical and behavioral researchers. I used to feel that public health and public policy researchers were underrepresented in the organization, but SRNT has made tremendous strides in that direction in the past few years. I now worry that we may be losing the other end of the scientific spectrum, our basic scientists. We need to keep the organization attractive to all.

As SRNT grows, we must also keep our own house in order. One challenge is how to maintain the open lines of communication through a larger organization. Our Newsletter and Listserv provide good tools for this, and I’ve tried this past year to keep members informed about the Board and Executive Committee activities with monthly SRNT Updates posted to the Listserv. No doubt more could be done.

At some point, SRNT may want to engage in a formal strategic planning process. So far, new initiatives have bubbled to the surface without a formal process. The clearest example is the global outreach effort that began last year with the Global Pre-conference. It continued this year with the creation of Global Scholarships to attract new members from developing countries. This initiative will reach a new milestone in 2004, when our first President from outside North America, Karl Fagerström, takes office. He, along with our Member Delegates, Jean-Francois Etter and Eva Kralikova, personify the international nature of our Society and the expanding prominence of our European colleagues. Karl’s presidency will end with SRNT’s first Annual Meeting to be held outside the United States (in Prague, in spring 2005).

I am honored to have had the opportunity to serve as SRNT President this past year. Leading the organization that is my professional home has been a great privilege. I was fortunate to inherit the post at a time of relative peace and prosperity for the Society. We owe our strong position to many factors, but our greatest resource is undoubtedly the creativity, passion, and volunteerism of you, our members.

As my term ends, I’d like to thank all of you who offered guidance and support to me and to the organization. Space doesn’t permit me to acknowledge all of you, but I do want to thank a few with whom I worked most closely:

Beth Klipping, our Executive Director, and the rest of our management team skillfully attended to the nuts and bolts of running the Society
Harry Lando, last year’s President, offered me wisdom and guidance and took charge of leading our international outreach efforts. His term on the Executive Board ends at the Annual Meeting, and SRNT owes him a great debt.
Laura Klein, 2004 Annual Meeting Chair, and David Drobes, Co-Chair, worked untold hours all year to assemble a terrific scientific program and made SRNT’s hardest job look easy.
Judith Gordon skillfully guided the Newsletter in this last year of her 3-year term as Editor. She filled the Newsletter with great features, figured out a better electronic distribution system, and then recruited and trained her successor, Karen Saules, whose term begins with the next issue.
Brion Fox, who took on the challenge of Chairing the Policy Committee and has led it in new directions.
Rick Brown, Chair of the Website committee, has led the effort to redesign the SRNT website, which makes it debut at the Annual Meeting.

Finally, welcome to Karl Fagerström, who becomes President at the end of the Annual Meeting; to Ken Warner, our new President-elect; and to Marina Picciotto, new Member Delegate. Karl, I know that the organization will be in extraordinarily capable hands next year. I wish you smooth sailing and an exciting year. I look forward to seeing everyone in Scottsdale.