President’s Address:  From the Past to the Future (November, 2007)

            I am honor and privileged to serve as the president of the Chinese American Medical Society (CAMS) from October 2007 to October 2009.  I look forward to these two years with much enthusiasm and vitality keeping in mind of what has been achieved and the visions generated from the many discussions among the officers and the directors of the board.  I hope my involvement on the board and having served as an officer of varying capacities in the last ten years will ease my transition into this important post of the society.  This year, the society has exceeded over one thousand members.

            It is most fitting for me to have my first announcement as the president to you on the unanimous decision from the board to have Dr. Hsueh Hwa Wang to continue as our executive director.  Her experience as a past president, past board member, and many years of tenure at this post will continue to provide us with the guiding light and we are forever indebted to her wisdom.  This society certainly cannot function without individuals such as our associate executive director, Susan Lau with her tireless energy to maintain many of the mundane but necessary functions.

            The society is fortunate to be endowed with long standing emeritus board members such as Dr. Sun Hoo Foo and Dr. David Chiu, both of whom have been past presidents.  We are equally blessed with a vibrant group of officers and board members who are eager to serve.  This brings me back to more than ten years ago, when I was first asked to participate in this society.    It was not until then when I realized that I could fulfill my duties of voluntarism by helping the members of my Chinese heritage.  This common cause that I have recognized from others in this society has solidified my enduring desire to serve.

            We all thrive and succeed on the shoulders of giants.  Our past presidents certainly have been giant leaders.  During my times with the society, I have observed important developments made by our past presidents; Dr. Marcus Loo and Dr. John Wang worked diligently to set high standards for our annual scientific meetings.  Working as the president and then executive vice president, Dr. John Wang secured important fundings from pharmaceutical industries to really up-level the quality of our annual meetings.  He ushered in a turning point and a new era when we saw attendance to our gala doubling and tripling.  This high profile attracted recognition from the hospitals and others alike.  Dr. Daisy Saw expanded the scope of our society by reaching out to and embracing our friendly and related societies such as the Phillipino-Chinese, Burmese and others.   Serving as the president, Dr. Tak Kwan led our board and worked with Dr. Savio Woo to revise our bylaws which brought us the formal election process and the transparency that we enjoy today.  Our immediate past president, Dr. Pak Chung confronted, tackled, and executed solutions to fundamental issues concerning the continuance of our non-profit standing.  Through his hard work and persistence, we now have a new accountant and a legal counsel specializing in non-profit organizations.  He has led the board to approve on building a continuing infrastructure for our society.  It is now up to us to follow through on his initiatives. 

            My goals for this term:

Chinese American Independent Physician Association: (CAIPA):  CAIPA is a successful for-profit spin-off of CAMS and came about because of the alliance established among the Chinese American Physicians in New York.  CAIPA has been most generous in its contribution to CAMS and is responsible for the large endowment of the CAMS/CAIPA community service fund.  We need to reinforce and nurture this relationship for future harvests that we cannot even envision today.  

Strategic Planning:  Under the leadership of our immediate past president, a strategic committee has been formed and will convene and advise the board of directors regarding the future directions of our society:  more of the same or raise the bar?

Permanent Staff:  The board will formulate a plan regarding the hiring of permanent staff for administering, secretarial, and clerical support to fulfill the visions of the board in congruence with our current assets, foreseeable revenue and operating expenses.

Political Action:  Within the legal confines of being a non-profit organization, the board will seek to establish a mechanism of maintaining communication with local politicians.

Research Opportunities:  Should we do more than just funding local projects?  My hope is that CAMS will begin to build toward providing a leadership role in setting agenda for ethnic based research that is relevant to our large Chinese American communities in the U.S.  American Heart Association and Society of Thoracic Surgeons had their birthplace right here in New York.  How many more times do we want to see us being grouped as Asian-Pacific Islanders?  China is not an island.  We applaud to the work of the Asian Health Center at NYU.  CAMS can align with CAIPA, Charles B. Wang Chinatown Health Clinics to do more.  To accomplish this, we need more than voluntary board members.  Can we spend our community service fund wisely to dedicate to this cause?

Scientific Meetings:  We shall continue to hold high standards for our annual meeting for academic exchanges.  They are to be informative with the state of the arts in medicine and what is relevant to our patient population while providing continuing medical education.

Community Services:  We had more activities in the last two years than ever before and must continue on this path.  In particular, CAMS shall be the resource for the community at large to rely on.

Information Technology:  We shall utilize the modern technology at our disposal to communicate with our members and the community at large.  We shall seek to develop a Chinese language based educational website for the common clinical problems and as a portal where the Chinese patients can refer to in seek of health related services.

Students/Physicians-in-training:  They are our future and with our help they will organize more formally, and to form subcommittees for medical students and residents.  We shall seek out local students to participate in our projects such as the above and the first Brooklyn flu vaccine project initiated by Downstate medical students and funded by CAMS to be held this winter.

Scholarships and Grants:  I like to see our scholarship recipients to attend our gala to receive the awards in person.  The grant recipients need to give reports of their work and present them in our scientific meetings.  I propose we have a research competition among students and residents during our scientific meeting for a grand prize. 

 

Wilson Ko, M.D.

Professor and Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery

SUNY Downstate Medical Center

www.wilson_ko.yourmd.com