President's update, January 2009

Incoming President's message, January 2008

The WFS held its Governing Council meeting in Glasgow last September together with a planning workshop. This followed another meeting of the Governing Council in Baltimore in June 2008 at which we decided to use the abbreviated name of World Sleep Federation instead of our full but perhaps media unfriendly name of World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies.

The WFS Governing Council is the ruling group made up of delegates from our member societies ESRS, ASA, ASRS, SRS, AASM, CSS and FLASS. The Governing Council therefore represents over 10,000 researchers and clinicians involved in the sleep field worldwide. The Glasgow planning workshop focused discussions on structure and mission for the WFS. In its current structure, the World Sleep Federation is essentially a voluntary organisation and it was decided to work towards building the Federation to a point that it would have an employed secretariat assisting the Executive. In this way, we would be following the path of similar organisations such as the International Association for the Study of Obesity and International Association for the Study of Pain. In order to clarify our mission from other groups wanting to represent the field of sleep internationally, the WFS will be principally involved in activities that will foster both basic and clinical sleep and relevant chronobiological research by promoting educational activities such as our quadrennial congress and development of special interest groups that would work across all the member societies. Currently Allan Pack, our Secretary-General is working on the initial special interest group proposals in 3 areas - sleep and breathing, insomnia and sleep and genetics. We have also proposed to work collaboratively with the International Pediatric Sleep Association and will not develop a separate pediatric special interest group. The plan is to thus establish steering committees for these groups and to hold interim workshops/meetings of these groups in between the quadrennial world Federation in meeting.

Incidentally, plans are well developed for the next WFS Congress in Kyoto, Japan meeting in October 2011. The Congress will be hosted by the Asian Sleep Research Society. A website has been established http://www.worldsleep2011.jp/ and it is planned that the Call for Symposia will occur in early 2010. Scientific and program committees are being established and any suggestions for the Congress are welcome from the WFS membership.

Another role proposed for the Federation is the development of international guidelines related to research or clinical practice and promotion of through WFS-affiliated journals and the international media. Although many of our member societies develop guidelines for local reference, these documents may not necessarily reflect practice in different academic or health systems. In this way, it has been refreshing to see collaborative international thinking in the role of sleep loss or sleep disorders in road and transport safety. I have had the pleasure in participating in two meetings in Europe in the past 18 months discussing these issues - one in Brussels chaired by Daniel Rodenstein with the EU COST action group and the other in Burgos, Spain also chaired by Joaquin Teran-Santos. This latter meeting brought together unions, government and judicial groups to discuss the link between sleep disorders and traffic accidents with a plan to develop a more robust regulatory framework against a background of examining international experience in this area. The WFS can play a strong role in fostering this sort of activity by better networking amongst membership and careful use of limited funds. In the future, we hope to use our special interest groups to develop research or clinical practice guidelines.

We welcome your ideas and involvement in the WFS and assure you our executive is working towards growing the organisation in a positive way representing the member societies. We hope to have an information session on the WFS at the APSS meeting in Seattle and have also proposed a WFS session in the conference programme. Please contact any of the executive membership through our website http://www.wfsrsms.org/

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I would first like to thank the Governing Council for honouring me with this position. Our incoming Executive is a committed group of people with diverse backgrounds and diverse geographical locations.

The geographical locations are so diverse that our Executive Committee teleconferences start near midnight Australian time to get all time zones in the best circadian alignment. We expect future clock gene genetic testing of the Executive to perfect the timing of these meetings.

The World Federation was founded in 1988 to represent international sleep researchers. It has evolved into an organisation that aims to represent not only those working in basic or human experimental research but also health professionals working in clinical sleep medicine.

Despite our different career backgrounds, our membership is linked by a fascination with the world of sleep - although this link may be tenuous when we are re-writing funding applications at 1am or working our way through a long clinic list of patients.

The concept of a world sleep community was certainly highlighted by the enthusiastic participation of all sections of the sleep community at worldsleep07 held in Cairns, Australia last September. It was also my honour to co-chair this meeting with my colleague John Wheatley.

I am sure the participants agree that the meeting was a great success, not only because of the spectacular location near the Great Barrier Reef, but also because of the high standard of science being presented. Many thanks to the those that helped with this project including particularly Stephanie Blower, Naomi Rogers and David Dinges. On a sad note, the untimely death of our friend and former WFSRSMS Secretary-General, Dag Stenberg just before the conference was remembered during the meeting.

The incoming World Federation Executive intends to build on the Cairns experience and continue to expand the profi le of the Federation as we look forward to the next quadrennial meeting in 2011 in Kyoto, Japan. I would warn our capable Vice President Masako Okawa that this date will draw close very quickly!

Many people ask “what are the roles, activities and future of the World Federation?”. Firstly, sleep research and sleep medicine are no different to other areas of human endeavour - it is a global effort and almost all scientific and clinical disciplines have a global organisation to provide leadership for its members in individual countries and different continents.

In the sleep world, we are fortunate to have a number of very active societies both at the national level and continental level. These have all grown from very small groups to what are often very quite powerful organisations, with memberships into the thousands.

The World Federation does not seek to take on any of the tasks already being performed by these organisations - but rather to coordinate activities between Federation members and develop new global strategies in sleep research and the care of patients with sleep disorders.

The incoming Executive sees its mission as firstly clarifying the structure of the existing World Federation to allow it to involve potential new society members; to foster sleep research and clinical sleep medicine exchange between countries through training schemes and coordinated information; to ensure that both sleep research and sleep medicine has appropriate global profile; and finally to ensure that the science of sleep is made more prominent by world congresses or other activities that bring together the world’s leading and promising scientists.

At present, the World Federation has limited resources. One of the other roles of the incoming Executive is to provide financial stability for the World Federation and to enable it to engage in programs to benefit all in our area of work. To achieve this we will engage with our member organisations for specific support, and also seek funds from industry and other sources that will provide complementary assistance. However, in the end, a lot of the work that we do will be like most professional scientific organisations - very dependant on the free labour and enthusiasm of our membership.

On that note, I would certainly welcome any feedback, ideas and constructive criticism to my email address at rrg@med.usyd.edu.au. Members do not need to be formal or shy about communicating - I am Australian and therefore generally open, friendly and without social graces. I look forward to hearing from you personally at the upcoming APSS and ESRS meetings.

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