It has been a privilege to serve and represent more than 5,000 health economics graduate students in 77 countries and support the work of presidents from 107 student chapters during my term as Chair of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Student Network in 2017-2018.

Where We Are Today

I continue to be impressed by the caliber of students I meet through ISPOR. I did not realize when accepting the position of global Chair how very amazing the network is and what it can do. This professional society treasures students and treats them like a future pharmaceutical company CEO (i.e., Drishti Shah is going to dominate), or a future HTA board member (William Hall will lead CADTH for sure), or a future Professor Emeritus (I am thinking of you, Junjie Ma). ISPOR shows this by investing time and money in students and is patient with this long-term investment. Because of this, IPSOR has gained my loyalty.

As a student-driven student network, we are resourceful, agile, hungry for knowledge, respectful, and grateful to our advisors. We have shown an incredible capacity to identify problems, develop solutions, and execute large-scale international projects. We publish newsletters, cast educational webinars, conduct surveys, showcase research, communicate resources, and much, much more.

Student Leadership Retreat

Ruixuan Jiang, PhD student at the University of Illinois Chicago, and Rhys Axon, PhD student at the University of Arizona, pass on wisdom from their experience as Co-Chairs of the Survey and Evaluation Committee to equip members of next year’s committee.

Eric Chinaeke, PhD Student at the University of South Carolina, volunteers to lead for a second term as Chair of the ISPOR Chapter Development Committee.

Laura Clark, PhD student at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, recruits Presidents to the Member Engagement Committee that she formed last year and will continue to lead.

All-star team of Student Chapter Presidents Omatola Olasupo (University of Florida), William Hall (University of British Columbia), Koen Degeling and Sofie Berghuis (University of Twente, Netherlands), and me (University of Washington).

Student-Faculty Luncheon

Junjie Ma leads a brainstorming session with academic faculty advisors and student chapter presidents to refine the new ISPOR HEOR Competency Inventory (Baltimore, 2018).

Students around the world taught me how to use Twitter this year. My favorite memory of this is when Gary O’Brien (PhD Student at University College Cork in Ireland) live tweeted a screen shot of my slides during one of our monthly webinar calls with all the student presidents.

Where We Are Going

Each year it seems that the new students are stronger than the year before.

Education Committee Co-Chairs William Hall (University of British Columbia) and Sofie Berghuis (University of Twente) develop goals and milestones for 2018-2019.

This year I watched ISPOR student presidents sustain the responsibilities of committees, revive opportunities they found important, and create new resources with far reaching benefit beyond our own classrooms to benefit other universities and generations of students that follow us.

Photo of the ISPOR Meeting Planning Committee strategizing face-to-face sessions for students at upcoming meetings in Barcelona, Tokyo, and New Orleans.

Over the past year, we have seen the participation of student presidents from outside the United States double on our monthly calls. We are so much better for it. This has immediate and downstream benefits for ISPOR: learning from the perspectives of health systems with different structures, preparing the next generation of global HTA board members, and encouraging consensus on methods to assess value.

Charles Aruchi Opurum (PhD Student at University of Nigeria, Nsukka) leads his ISPOR student chapter on World AIDS Day walk through their community.

New Student Chapters	Country	Est. in 2017-2018
Nnamdi Azikiwe University	Nigeria	Apr 2018
Erasmus University, Rotterdam	Netherlands	Apr 2018
Chapman University	USA	Apr 2018
Texas A & M University	USA	Mar 2018
Royal College of Surgeons	Ireland	Feb 2018
Karolinska Institutet	Sweden	Feb 2018
Al-Ameen College of Pharmacy	India	Feb 2018
University College Cork	Ireland	Jan 2018
Universidad John F Kennedy	Argentina	Dec 2017
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)	Ghana	Dec 2017
Indo-Soviet Friendship College of Pharmacy	India	Dec 2017
University of Newcastle	Austrailia	Sept 2017

I look forward to seeing how new regional student leadership positions will connect us even more. I am confident in the ISPOR student network’s ability to grow in size, diversity, and strength next year. It is time for me to get out of the way and give some rising all-star PhD students an opportunity to shine and lead.

What comes next

Photo of incoming 2018-2019 ISPOR Student Network Chair Koen Degeling and myself, outgoing 2017-2018 Chair, at the International ISPOR Conference in Baltimore.

It is a privilege to introduce you to the next ISPOR Student Network Chair for 2018-2019, Koen Degeling, a PhD student from the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Koen has developed into an expert on discrete event simulation with mentorship from his advisor Maarten IJzerman. I am passing the torch to a strong and capable leader who is going to take this network to the next level. He is enthusiastic, motivated, and took great initiative to secure the position.

Koen served last year as co-chair of the Chapter Development Committee. He has won the ISPOR Best Student Podium Presentation Award (Milan, 2015), led a workshop during an ISPOR meeting (Glasgow, 2017), and co-taught an ISPOR short course (Baltimore, 2018), and was President when the University of Twente was selected as Best New Outstanding Student Chapter. Koen is a dreamer with a lot of ideas. He is a great communicator and facilitator. I have admired his passion to reach out to each new student president individually to offer his support throughout the year.

In addition to celebrating Koen’s individual talents, we also celebrate him as the first ISPOR Student Network Chair from outside the United States. I am confident he will effectively advocate for the student members of ISPOR, mentor many Presidents, guide the committees, facilitate monthly meetings, and enrich the experience and opportunities of all ISPOR students.

Many Thanks

I had a blast and made friends that I will keep for a lifetime.

I would like to thank all student chapter presidents and officers who found time between exams and dissertation research to offer their altruism and energy for the benefit of others. You taught me so much and I look forward to our professional paths crossing again in the future.

I must thank Nancy Berg for being an incredible role model as a strong, capable, and respected female CEO. I would like to thank ISPOR staff members Jason Cohen, Jennifer Casillas, Stacey Mauriello, Rebecca Corey, Lyn Beamesderfer, and Stephen Priori, for doing such a great job. I thank Zeba Kahn for advising the Student Network since its creation in 1998, and Laura Pizzi for her support as Chair of the ISPOR Faculty Advisory Council.

Thank you Shelby Reed for leveraging the power of your ISPOR presidency to launch the Women in HEOR Initiative. Thank you Professor Lou Garrison for showing and teaching me how to do all of this. Thank you Ernest Law for co-chairing the 2016-2017 Survey and Evaluation Committee with me in and providing me with real-time feedback to develop strong facilitation skills. Thank you Mark Bounthavong for introducing me to ISPOR and inviting me to be your Vice President at the University of Washington student chapter in 2015. The University of Washington chapter improves each year thanks to a cascade of strong leadership by Nathaniel Hendrix, Erik Landaas, and Shalak Gunjal.

Thanks #ISPORstudents.

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