Joint Letter from ATS President Michelle Ng Gong, MD, MS, ATSF, and Chief Executive Officer Karen J. Collishaw, MPP, CAE
The American Thoracic Society has always evolved alongside the science, medicine, and communities we serve. Today, that evolution is taking on new urgency and purpose. We are modernizing how ATS makes decisions, how we work, how we engage members and partners, and how we respond to emerging challenges – not for modernization’s sake, but so that we can more effectively fulfill our mission to advance respiratory health.
That work begins with governance. In 2024, the ATS launched a major restructuring to create a stronger, more agile, and more transparent Society. Because the previous Board of Directors was significantly larger than those of comparable high-performing organizations, the new model reduced it to 15 members, lengthened terms to improve continuity, and adopted a competency-based approach to Board composition. At the same time, the ATS established the Council of the ATS to strengthen two-way communication among the Board, Assemblies, Committees, and general membership and to serve as an advisory body to the Board of Directors.
The significance of those changes extends beyond the organizational structure. A smaller, more focused Board enables more efficient and streamlined decision-making, while the Council of the ATS preserves the breadth of expertise and perspectives that make ATS distinctive. These changes effectively made ATS governance smaller in footprint but greater in impact – better positioned to make strategic decisions and respond to the needs of our members, their patients, and the global respiratory community.
That evolution is ongoing. The Governance Task Force is now taking a closer look at the Society’s Assembly and Committee structures, with a focus on how they can best support member engagement, collaboration, professional development, and the work of the ATS going forward. As part of that process, a new Task Force will gather perspectives through focus groups with the Council of the ATS, Board of Directors, and staff, followed by an opportunity for all members to provide feedback through a member survey in October. We welcome your perspective as this work moves forward. To share your thoughts, please contact governance@thoracic.org.
Building a More Responsive Society for the Future
We are applying the same thinking to how ATS operates and engages its members. Our digitalization strategy is addressing fragmented systems and manual processes so that information is more reliable, workflows are simpler, and more organizational capacity can be directed toward work that serves members and advances our mission. Signs of this transformation can already be seen, both operationally and externally. Internally, the recent implementation of a unified project-management approach across the organization has strengthened coordination and accountability. Externally, greater organizational agility helped enable the rapid launch of ATS NOW — tailored education, anytime, anywhere — in May, extending access to scientific and educational video content beyond traditional moments and formats.
The new ATS AI Task Force launched last year has been hard at work exploring how clinicians and researchers can responsibly and ethically integrate artificial intelligence into their own practice and research. That work was on display at the first-ever ATS AI Lab presented at the ATS 2026 International Conference back in May, which offered members opportunities to engage directly with the rapidly evolving role of AI in respiratory medicine.
The next phase of ATS’s digital transformation is already underway. The Society has just selected a new association management system and begun mapping the processes that will support its implementation, an important step toward a more integrated data strategy to improve member-to-member communication. This fall, as noted above, we will also survey members to help guide continued improvements to the membership experience and ensure ATS resources address the evolving needs and challenges of our multidisciplinary community across all career stages.
These efforts are connected by a common goal: creating a Society that can understand and respond to the needs of its members more effectively. The value of becoming nimbler is clearest when we look beyond our internal operations. Recent developments in federal research policy offer an important example. ATS has strongly opposed the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s proposed Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance because of concerns that it could weaken expert peer review, further politicize research funding, restrict dissemination of federally funded research, and create barriers to scientific progress and improvements in patient health.
On Sept. 1, the House of Representatives approved bipartisan legislation that would maintain federal funding through Dec. 11, while temporarily preventing OMB from issuing or finalizing the proposed rule, or a substantially similar rule, during that period. President Trump signed the bill, including the provision temporarily blocking implementation of the proposed OMB grant rule.
For ATS, the principle is straightforward: federal research funding should be guided by scientific merit, rigorous and transparent peer review, and the health needs of patients and the public. Our responsibility is to recognize consequential developments, bring the expertise of our community into the policy process, and advocate for the conditions that allow rigorous science to flourish.
Turning Agility into Advocacy Action
We are bringing that same responsiveness – and an increased emphasis on partnership – to questions affecting not only policy, but also clinical practice. The ATS is currently working with the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine to independently evaluate evolving recommendations for influenza, RSV, and COVID-19 vaccination. Together, our societies are drawing expert review and guidance from respected scientific and medical organizations to determine which recommendations they can collectively endorse.
This work reflects an important part of the Society we are building. Being more responsive does not mean the ATS must always act alone. It means knowing when to lead, when to convene expertise, and when collaboration with other organizations can strengthen the guidance and advocacy we provide. Our growing focus on global partnerships and engagement reflects that same recognition.
Ultimately, however, modernization matters only if it helps us improve respiratory health.
That is especially meaningful this September as we recognize World Lung Day on Sept. 25 and its 2026 theme, “A Lifetime of Healthy Lungs.” The theme speaks directly to the breadth of our mission: to help the world breathe – by advancing respiratory science, supporting clinicians, strengthening public health, advocating for patients, and helping people protect their lung health throughout their lives.
We have made meaningful progress, but our work is far from finished. In the months ahead, we will continue building the digital and data infrastructure that will allow the ATS to work more effectively, listen more closely to our members, and respond faster to their needs. We will continue expanding opportunities for year-round learning and collaboration. And we will continue strengthening the partnerships, advocacy, and scientific leadership that allow us to respond when respiratory health, research, or patient care is at stake.
Together, we ask each member of our community to consider what a lifetime of healthy lungs means in your own work: what can you do through your research, clinical practice, teaching, advocacy or community to make that possibility real for more people?
Working in partnership with each other, we can build a stronger ATS, advance science, improve care, advocate for patients and help make a lifetime of healthy lungs possible for more people.
The measure of our progress will not simply be how ATS has changed, but what those changes enable this community to accomplish.
| Michelle Ng Gong, MD, MS, ATSF President | Karen J. Collishaw, MPP, CAE Chief Executive Officer |