Objective: Venous societies are central to fostering scientific advances in venous medicine. Presidents of these societies hold influential positions and help shape the direction of venous research and practice. In this study, we aimed to characterize the demographics of presidents from American and European venous societies to identify potential trends among them. We explored factors such as age, ethnicity, and gender to provide insights into the composition of leadership within these organizations. To help characterize these among present American and European venous societies, we queried respective websites for the names of their presidents since their respective inceptions.
Methods: We compiled the names of the presidents of four major venous societies (American Venous Forum (AVF), the American Venous and Lymphatic Society (AVLS), the European Venous Forum (EVF), and the International Union of Phlebology (UIP).) Age, ethnicity, and gender were determined using healthgrades.com, Google Scholar, online obituaries, and public health records. The year of ascendancy to the presidency and the year of birth were used as identifying time points. Statistical significance was established using a Student’s t-test and determined at p< 0.05.
Results: Among the four societies identified and included for further analysis, presidents of the AVLS had the lowest average age (51.4 ± 1.83, SD=7.76) and were significantly younger than those of every other venous society examined (p< 0.05). European society presidents were significantly older than American society presidents (60.5 v. 55.5, p< 0.05) and UIP presidents were the oldest (62.3 ± 1.53, SD=5.08). Among the American societies, AVF presidents were significantly older than AVLS presidents (59.5 v. 51.4, p< 0.001) while comparisons between the European societies did not display significance (p=0.09). Of the 86 presidents identified, six were female (7%). All societies examined were composed predominantly of white males, with UIP being the most ethnically diverse society (81.8% white). Interestingly, each society demonstrated a significant increase in both ethnic and gender diversity among the presidents when comparing demographics from the first 5 years to the most recent 5 years of each society (p< 0.001).
Conclusions: Our data reveal a wide variability in age, gender, and ethnicity among European and American venous societies. Over the last 5 years, venous societies demonstrated increasingly diverse leadership. These trends may serve as valuable waypoints for future research exploring diversity and inclusion in these societies.
