The mission of the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) is to advance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of kidney diseases around the world. ISN has much to offer members of the Philippines Society of Nephrology, with its many resources and opportunities for engagement.
Recently ISN has been specifically targeting younger nephrologists and offers free membership to nephrology trainees. ISN has more than 9000 members, 40% from the Asia-Pacific region. With over 400 ISN members, the Philippines has the 5th highest number of members among ISN’s 130 affiliated societies.
ISN aims to advance global nephrology thru education, advocacy and research. The education portfolio includes regional capacity-building programs, meetings, publications and online education. ISN spends the majority of its budget to support outreach programs in developing countries. These programs include Fellowships, Sister Renal Centres, Sister Transplant Centres, Educational Ambassador visits, CME programs and Clinical Research. South East Asia and the Philippines have been frequent recipients of these programs. ISN meetings include the World Congress of Nephrology, the new ISN Frontiers (replacing Forefronts and Nexus meetings), ISN Global Kidney Health Summits and policy forums. ISN aims to produce year-long educational opportunities linked to these meetings. ISN Academy is a new platform for delivering online and mobile education resources, including many presentations, webinars in major languages, a state-of-the-art pathology collection and other educational resources. To ISN's major publications Kidney International (KI) and KI Supplements has been added from the middle of 2016 the new open access online journal KI Reports which is proving very popular. The many components of ISN research (eg clinical trials, CKD cohorts, etc) and ISN advocacy (eg relationship with WHO, Declaration of Istanbul, etc) will be discussed.
ISN has two major initiatives, one in AKI (“0by25”) and one in CKD (“Closing the Gaps”), both with many individual components. ISN is developing a Global Kidney Health Atlas to catalogue national kidney resources and identify gaps. From 2017 there will be a renewed focus on ESKD care, specifically targeting access to dialysis around the globe.
The fruitful collaboration between ISN and PSN should continue to grow, presenting great opportunities to benefit and to participate for the members of PSN.
