President's Message

Dear Colleagues,

It is an honor to serve as your President. At our Annual Business Meeting on April 10, I had the incredible experience of getting “pinned” by Dr. Giles Whalen our past president who has been an outstanding example of strong, graceful leadership the last two years. Standing up front and seeing all our past presidents and my teachers was indeed a humbling experience. Seeing such a large gathering of colleagues was overwhelming. A big thank you to Dr. Michelle Hadley, our incoming vice president; Dr. Justin Maykel, our secretary; and Dr. Adib Karam, our treasurer, for volunteering their time and talent for these positions of service. We as a team intend to do our best to fulfill the mandate of following the example of prior outstanding leaders in promoting the WDMS as a premier medical society in MA and the USA!

I am sure everyone has ideas of how to improve the activities and functioning of WDMS, and I do too. However, my agenda is to serve you, the members of the Worcester District, and take up the challenge of 1) Increasing the membership of WDMS and 2) Increasing member engagement, as well as exposure of new (and not-so-new) members to the Worcester community via “Health Matters”, the signature television program of the WDMS. We also intend to work hard on the long-term financial stability of the WDMS so that we maintain and enhance the multiple programs we host every year.

To achieve all of this, I request every member be proactive in reaching out to their friends and colleagues to participate and contribute in all our meetings. I encourage you to email and telephone your thoughts and suggestions to the officers and chairpersons of various committees as we press toward our goal of pushing WDMS to greater heights.

A special note to the editorial team of our flagship magazine “Worcester Medicine”: Please carry on publishing wonderful articles on topics relevant to our Worcester community. I wish all success to our Editor, Dr. Parul Sarwal, who is working hard on the print and online versions of our magazine, as well as on the social media presence for WDMS. We look around today at radio, television, and print media, as well as social media platforms and we see echo chambers of one-sided opinions to the exclusion of alternate viewpoints resulting in a loss of integrity and trust in these outlets. At the WDMS, as we try to increase the engagement of existing members and attract new members, we hope to present balanced versions of controversial subjects so that Worcester Medicine stands out as an inclusive (the “I” of DEI) magazine.

I could not end my first President’s Message without a special shout-out to our Executive Director, Martha Wright. She continues working long hours behind the scenes - preparing, and then delivering on so many tasks that go into making our WDMS successful. Thank you, Martha.

Thank you once again to all our members for placing your confidence in our incoming team.

Sincerely,Alwyn Rapose, MD alwyn.rapose@reliantmedicalgroup.org