ISBI Members and Friends, I wish you a Happy New Year!
Let’s start the new year with a little trivia. What American movie highlighted the line, “If you build it, they will come?” Well, it was Field of Dreams (Kevin Costner, 1989). Kevin Costner built an old-fashioned baseball diamond in his cornfield and crowds of people arrived. The ISBI built a Burn Center Assessment Program. We initially received 8 applications for the 2025 first cycle of visit. In 2025, we successfully conducted 4 burn center assessments (3 in Colombia and 1 in Costa Rica). We have received 22 applications for the 2026 cycle of visits. We are very excited by this positive response and are ramping up our travel teams to get to as many of these centers in the upcoming year as possible!
The ISBI Board of Directors is committed to being an international burn society for everyone who wants to participate. To this end, the Board of Directors has changed the ISBI membership due’s structure to make ISBI membership more affordable for MDs, Nurses, Rehabilitation Practitioners and other medical professionals in low and middle resource countries. Please visit our website to see these new lower fees and encourage your colleagues, friends, and fellow burn practitioners to join the ISBI!
Shortly, ISBI will be releasing its new refreshed look, rebranded color scheme and logo. The new website will offer educational content such as webinars, podcasts, clinical care videos, highlighted peer reviewed articles, posters etc. under its Professional Resources/Education & Training section brought to you by the various ISBI Committees.
Many of our committees are active but I want to draw attention to a new energized Prevention Committee led by Dr. Barclay Stewart. The Committee is proposing a modified Delphi process to explore the barriers to burn prevention and create a pathway to reduce burn injury worldwide modelled along the lines of the United Nations Road Safety initiative. Dr. Stewart and the Committee will be collaborating with many of our established partners and friends around the world to accomplish this task. Look for an announcement of this and other prevention projects on the website shortly. We invite and welcome all of you to participate in these projects.
Finally, please start making your travel plans for the upcoming ISBI Congress to be held in Santiago, Chile on 11-15 October 2026. The Program Committee, under the direction of our President-Elect, Dr. Ariel Miranda, has been preparing what promises to be an innovative, inclusive and interactive program.
I look forward to seeing all of you very soon!
Sincerely,
David Harrington, MD
ISBI President