September has been a busy and productive month at the BSG. I was delighted to welcome our new and returning officers to my first Executive, Council, and Trustee meetings in London as BSG President. We heard updates on the impressive work happening across the BSG including the expansion of our successful mentoring programme and our continuing work on delivering high quality guidelines and guidance for our members. 

As always, the autumn BSG events calendar is full of high-quality educational events. Highlights for Trainees coming up soon include the BSG Taster Course in Sheffield and the BSG Introduction Day in London. 

We are also looking forward to our virtual BSG Campus on 2nd-5th December. Planning is also well underway for next year’s BSG LIVE conference, taking place in Glasgow from 23rd-26th June 2025. 

I had the opportunity to represent the BSG at the Chinese Society of Gastroenterology meeting in Shenyang in September. The BSG and CSG are committed to closer collaboration, and we have agreed plans for closer collaboration in a range of areas including joint sessions at our annual meetings, research collaboration, and travelling fellowships.  

We introduced Project 90 at BSG LIVE in June. This is a programme where we will celebrate the profession and the membership by investing in supporting our members in new ways in the run-up to the BSG turning 90 in 2027. The next phase of this is underway, and we have recruited five excellent Workstream Leads to start work on delivering this programme. With Beverly Oates as overall Clinical Lead, we have: 

Monica Bose – leading on Leadership and Management 

Phedra Dodds - leading on Nurse Education 

Mo Thoufeeq – leading on Travelling Fellowships 

Umesh Basavaraju – leading on Regional meetings 

John McGoran leading on Career Support 

Please keep your eyes open for Project 90 updates with a series of fellowship opportunities being announced this autumn. I look forward to sharing more details of this exciting work as it takes shape. 

I am delighted to see the expansion of the Frontline Gastroenterology editorial team, led by new Editor-in-Chief Dr Phil Smith. We very much hope to see Frontline go from strength to strength working alongside our world leading Gut journal.  

The BSG are committed to making our organisation even better and, as is good practice for organisations of our size, have commissioned a governance review which is now underway to guide us on what we can do better. 

We are committed to hearing from you and are looking at ways to do this better. In the meantime, I welcome your comments and feedback via [email protected]. 

Best wishes, 

Prof Colin Rees