ASTCT Committees
ASTCT has several volunteer committees that meet year-round on a variety of topics. These groups are integral to developing education and guiding the future of the society.
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Committee on Awards
The Committee on Awards serves to address matters pertaining to awards given by ASTCT. The ASTCT Committee on Awards reviews all submissions and selects the recipients for each award presented at the 2023 Tandem Meetings | Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT™ and CIBMTR®. This includes approving the application process, monitoring submissions, and convening study sections to review all applications.
Committee Leadership
Smita Bhatia, MD, MPH - Co-Chair
Helen Heslop, MD - Co-Chair
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Olivia Gunn
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Committee on Cellular Therapy
The Committee is charged with providing the ASTCT membership with a home for cellular therapy by: providing representation on the Board; adding more sessions such as tissue repair and regenerative medicine to the Tandem Meetings, and soliciting topical articles for the Transplantation and Cellular Therapy journal.
Committee Leadership
Marcela Maus, MD, PhD - Chair
Fred Locke, MD - Vice Chair
Committee Goals and Objectives
- Establish and strengthen preferred relationships with other organizations in the field (e.g. AST, ISCT, NMDP, WMDA, WBMT, and ASGCT).
- Develop joint programs with these organizations as needed.
- Sponsor ASTCT sessions at each organization’s meeting and invite speakers to the annual Tandem Meetings.
- Require submission of articles on cellular therapy and transplantation biology to Transplantation and Cellular Therapy .
- Support FACT initiative to develop clinical standards for patients receiving CAR T cells.
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Anna Hawkshead
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Committee on Diversity and Inclusion
The Committee is charged with ensuring that ASTCT fosters a diverse and inclusive environment for both leaders and members.
Committee Leadership
Rayne Rouce, MD - Chair
Committee Goals and Objectives
- Use data and demographic information provided by Women, Under Represented Minorities (URM) SIG to determine baseline starting point.
- To increase the numbers of women and under-represented minorities in leadership positions on the executive committee by at least 20% each year until achieved and maintained.
- To assertively recruit women, URM and LGBTQ members starting at the resident and fellow levels.
- Review the composition of the board and the committees after elections.
- Monitor Scientific Committee for diversity and make recommendations.
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Olivia Gunn
Committee on Education
The Committee is charged with upholding and implementing activities in support of ASTCT's mission relating to education. The mission of ASTCT is to secure the highest quality of care for all blood and marrow transplantation and cellular therapy patients. Providing guidelines for professional training is one of the key purposes of ASTCT. As such, certification in blood and marrow transplantation would support this purpose and mission by defining and standardizing these requirements.
Committee Leadership
Tania Jain, MD - Chair
Reshma Ramlal, MD - Vice Chair
Committee Goals and Objectives
- Determine the rationale and feasibility for a certification program.
- Establish the ASTCT Institute as the home for online education.
- Establish and manage a panel of dedicated case discussion leaders with subject matter expertise for the ASTCT Clinical Case Forum.
- Complete and disseminate the slide deck for early referral.
- Maintenance of Certification; transform the two ASTCT Practice Improvement Modules (PIMs) into fully functional “stand-alone” modules.
- Extend continuing education (CE) to allied professionals.
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Kyra Newman
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Committee on Government Relations
The Committee is charged with monitoring ongoing national regulatory and legislative activities affecting blood and marrow transplantation and cellular therapies; offering ASTCT expertise and research to regulatory agencies as appropriate; informing ASTCT membership of pertinent regulatory and legislative activity.
Committee Leadership
Krishna Komanduri, MD - Chair
Gary Goldstein - Vice Chair
Committee Goals and Objectives
- Cultivate closer working relationships and government affairs involvement with stakeholders who have aligned priorities with ASTCT
- Use advocacy efforts to monitor key committees and/or organization's initiatives on areas that would have an impact on ASTCT stakeholders
- Develop and execute a GR committee leadership meeting with CMS
- Develop and execute the schedule for the Hill Day including key association invitations with a recap of pertinent items for publication to ASTCT members.
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Alycia Maloney
Committee on Informatics
The committee is charged to provide guidance for the development and implementation of data management systems and applications to assist in carrying out the missions of the hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and cell therapy community. Primary goals include fostering interactions between clinicians and informatics professionals, working to improve systems and methods to help centers submit required volume and outcomes data to the Center for International Bone Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR), the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cell Therapy Programs (FACT), and authorized insurance carriers, and to share volume and outcomes data in support of local, regional, and national research, teaching and quality management initiatives. Additional important goals include assisting centers in developing and/or implementing high quality multipurpose cell therapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation databases in accordance with international data-representation and data transmission standards such as HL7-FHIR, BRIDG, and others, and to work with commercial software vendors to identify and address areas where modifications of existing systems might be able to enhance patient safety, data accuracy and/or interoperability
Committee Leadership
Thomas Klumpp, MD - Chair
Charles Martinez, BS - Co-Chair
Committee Goals and Objectives
- Improve systems and methods to help centers submit outcome data electronically to AGNIS/SCTOD.
- Identify and approve vendors to assist centers to develop relational databases for research/outcome data which can be shared with any BRIDG-compatible system.
- Collaborate with NCI/NHLBI to develop data standards for SCT. Collaborate with CIBMTR/NMDP to optimize data sharing strategies.
- Represent center needs to federal agencies, vendors, and CIBMTR/NMDP.
- Complete testing of the BRIDG physical model.
- Develop a static interface engine to transmit data between BRIDG and AGNIS in collaboration with NCI/CIBMTR/NMDP/U Minn.
- Issue RFA to identify vendors qualified to help centers use BRIDG.
- Interact with vendors to encourage adoption of BRIDG/CDE standards.
- Work with CIBMTR to stabilize data models for future versions of the TED and research CIBMTR forms
- Work with NMDP to develop methods of electronic sharing of donor data.
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Liz Stockton
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Committee on International Affairs
The mission of the ASTCT Committee on International Affairs is to promote international relationships and activities engaging world leaders and trainees contributing to the development of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy. Particularly, it will support ASTCT members engaged in international relationships that value the importance of conjugating scientific advances with real-life opportunities for improving access, and enhance research and education collaborations in countries with limited resources.
Committee Leadership
Mary Flowers, MD - Chair
Nelson Chao, MD, MBA - Vice Chair
Committee Goals and Objectives
- Develop and foster educational and membership partnerships with international transplantation and cellular therapy organizations
- Arrange for educational opportunities for BMT specialists in lower-middle-income countries (LMIC)
- Assess opportunities for ASTCT speaker exchanges with international associations
- Create and maintain International Council to serve as advisory board for educational sessions at Tandem Meetings and elsewhere
- Oversee implementation of international scholarship program at various institutions in the US
ASTCT Staff Liaisons - Anna Hawkshead
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Committee on Payor Relations
The committee is charged with achieving standardized methods of reporting data to third-party payers, and standardizing procedures for replying to requests for information from payers.
Committee Leadership
Mohamed A. Kharfan Dabaja, MD, MBA - Chair
Michael Rabin, MBA, MPA - Vice Chair
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Alycia Maloney
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Committee on Practice Guidelines
The Committee is charged with determining how the Society can develop practice guidelines for the practice of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
Committee Leadership
Paul Carpenter, MD - Chair
Mehdi Hamadani, MD - Vice Chair
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Jessica Scott
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Committee on Quality Outcomes
The Committee is charged with the development of innovative methods for measuring and reporting transplant center-specific quality based on outcomes of care. This includes the Subcommittee on Informatics and Subcommittee on Pediatrics.
Committee Leadership
Chris Dandoy, MD - Chair
Dianna Howard, MD - Vice Chair
Committee Goals and Objectives
- Develop strategies to assist underperforming centers to select structural and process improvements most likely to improve quality outcomes (FACT collaboration).
- Collaborate with FACT Clinical Quality Committee to develop strategies to combine process and structural quality measures with quality outcome measures to develop an over-arching quality evaluation strategy.
- Define quality domains for ASTCT and FACT to avoid duplication of effort and strategic conflict.
- Monitor and conform to federal and insurer outcomes monitoring mandates.
- Serve as an intermediary between transplant centers and CIBMTR to refine quality data submission and reporting.
- Collaborate with CIBMTR to evaluate and update quality outcome metrics.
- Initiate evaluation and testing of patient-reported quality of life measurement tools.
- Collaborate with the National Quality Forum To endorse transplant outcome measures.
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Anthony Cisneros
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Committee on Trainees and Junior Faculty
The committee is charged with ensuring that the society continues to develop resources and opportunities for early-career BMT and cell therapy professionals.
Committee Leadership
Surbhi Sidana, MD - Co-Chair
Melody Smith, MD - Co-Chair
Committee Goals and Objectives
- Develop content for a Tandem Meeting session focused on early career practitioners
- Develop and support an onboarding/welcome process for in-training members
- Determine need for, feasibility of, and associated costs for delivering additional resources or programming to early career members
- Coordinate with the ASTCT Committee on Education to develop additional content targeted to early career members
ASTCT Staff Liaison - Olivia Gunn
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