The SIR International Scholarship Program fosters connections at SIR 2022
At SIR 2022, the SIR International Scholarship Program celebrated both a return to in-person events and its 10th anniversary. Over the course of its history, the International Scholarship has been awarded to 134 individuals from more than 40 countries.
The program exists to enhance the educational experiences of its visiting scholars by offering physicians from other nations an opportunity to learn, connect with other medical professionals at the SIR Annual Scientific Meeting, and to share their experiences with the IRs they meet. Through networking, focused programming and often optional observerships, the program builds relationships with future international IR leaders, fosters the growth of IR around the world, and educates U.S. IRs about the challenges and opportunities facing that growth.
“As our Interventional Radiology community grows, we need to support those around the world that ensure patients get the best care possible.” said Jay Shah, MD, co-chair of the International Scholars Program. “There is potential for Interventional Radiology to exist in every corner of the globe, but we need to champion access to resources and formal training pathways for imaging experts to gain clinical skills, and certifications.”
The program’s curriculum brings participating scholars into the educational pathway through events such as lectures, Q&A panels with IR leaders, and special events like the daily hackathons.
This year the program also included a case competition held on Tuesday, June 14, in which scholars presented an IR case from their home country. “The room was packed,” said Janice Newsome, MD, FSIR, who co-coordinated the session with Dr. Shah. “The scholars brought some incredible cases, from vascular malformations to retinal blastomas—the crowd went wild. My mind was blown.”
According to Dr. Shah, the case competition highlighted one of the key aspects of the International Scholars Program—the learning goes both ways.
“A lot of the SIR attendees in the audience could not believe these procedures were provided in other countries and had no idea about some of these techniques,” Dr. Shah said.
The success of the case competition speaks to the passion that a lot of IRs have for global health, Dr. Shah says. “There are a lot more people interested in global health than we think. There’s a lot of untapped passion here.”
That passion translates into a dedicated community of international and North American IRs, he says, and these scholars will go on to mentor other scholars. The program also makes connections in unexpected ways—such as when Dr. Shah was able to connect a female trainee from Chile he met during SIR 2022 with one of the international scholars—also a female trainee from Chile.
“IR has a large footprint, but it’s a small community and they are meeting here at SIR through opportunities like this,” he said. “It just highlights that we can’t form these connections without such opportunities.”
“As one of the recipients of the SIR International Scholarship grant, I had the opportunity to meet with other aspiring and established IRs from around the globe,” said Azza Naif, MD. “It also gave me the opportunity to get the word out on Tanzania, as some had no idea what has been accomplished there so far.”
Dr. Shah says the success of this year’s program makes him optimistic for its continued presence at future annual meetings, where he hopes to expand programming and bring the International Scholars program into a dedicated session. “I love global health. It’s why I got into IR,” he says. “I’m really excited to see what we can do next.”
Missed Dr. Shah’s session? View “Addressing Global IR Health Disparities via Digital Health, Entrepreneurship, Novel Technology and Training” any time via SIR Now.
