The International Organization for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IOIBD) is the only international worldwide organization devoted to these chronic and sometimes disabling diseases involving different parts of the gastrointestinal tract. The mission of the IOIBD is to promote the health of people with IBD worldwide by setting the direction for patient care, education and research. This is in particular the case for those countries where the diseases are just evolving. Task forces of IOIBD promote scientific developments by designing non commercial clinical studies. Grants are provided for innovative start-up projects and large scale trials not receiving funds otherwise due to lack of economic or political interest. Travel grants are given to young scientists from countries with evolving IBD. The organization furthermore aims at developing clear definitions of the different manifestations of IBD as well as for the targets and endpoints of treatment in practice and research, in particular in clinical trials.
The long-term goal of IOIBD is to contribute to the elucidation of the cause of these still relatively new diseases and finally to the development of a causal and curative treatment, thereby making its existence unnecessary.
Mission Statement
To promote the health of people with IBD worldwide by setting the direction for patient care, education and research.
Upcoming meetings:
11-14 April 2013, New York (USA)
03-06 April 2014, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
March/April 2015, Montreal (Canada)
With sadness we have learned of the passing of our member Bryan Warren, GI Pathologist. We remember Bryan as a lovely man and a wonderful friend and colleague.
His supreme talent was in teaching. He organised and facilitated seminal courses even as a trainee in Bristol, especially the “Cut-up course”, then unique in UK pathology. Anyone who has sat in a Bryan Warren lecture will remember his style and his dynamism with particular fondness.
Although teaching, training and research were central to his professional life, he was also an administrator and organiser of consummate skill. He was Meetings Secretary to both the Association of Clinical Pathologists and the BDIAP and an elected member of the Pathological Society Committee. Always highly innovative. In 2010, the BDIAP awarded him its Cunningham Medal in recognition of his huge contribution to that Society. He also had major involvement in the British Society of Gastroenterology, having been an elected member of Council and served as both Chairman and Secretary of the Pathology Section of the BSG, the leading body for GI pathology in the UK . He was also just one of three pathologists worldwide invited to become a member of the International Organisation of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IOIBD) and chaired the Pathology Task Force. Several of his publications had their origin in this select group.
We will all miss his peerless enthusiasm and his extraordinary appetite for work. He leaves behind a vast legacy of original papers, chapters and books. Although highly important to him, Bryan’s life was not just about gastroenterological pathology. He had strong family bonds and our thoughts and prayers go out to Tracy, his wife, and to Scott and Emma, his step-children, to whom he was very close.
Jean-Fred Colombel, chairman IOIBD
on behalf of all members
