• Renewal of committee membership

After many years of service, including past chairperson, Peter Flanagan retired from the committee. Carla Dinardo, a member of the Young Professionals Council, stepped down, as did Birgit Gathof. New members are Jannison Reibero (Brazil), from the Young Professionals Council, Richard Charlewood from the New Zealand Blood Service, and Naomi Rahimi-Levene, from the Shamir Medical Center in Israel. All proposed new members were approved by the ISBT Board of directors, and the SCE website was updated.

• SCE session at the Barcelona conference

To raise awareness of the ISBT Code of Ethics and ethical issues in transfusion medicine and cellular therapies, a “Fireside chat” interactive session was again held at the Barcelona conference. Speakers were Richard Charlewood (also moderator), Ratti Ram Sharma, and Naomi Rahimi-Levene. Vignettes were presented, with audience members voting with their phones on various options. The link was made between decision-making in the vignettes and principles in the Code of Ethics. There was lively discussion, and one of the audience members came forward as being interested in the SCE and is now a member (Jean-Baptiste Thibert).

• SCE session at the Milan conference

Since the sessions in Gothenburg and Barcelona were successful, we are planning an interactive workshop for the Milan meeting, which will again include vignettes and active audience participation. Presenters from the SCE will include Shirley Owusu-Ofori (chair and speaker), Jean-Baptiste Thibert, Birgit Gathof, and Nelson Tsuno. After this session, all members of the SCE working party will have actively participated in one of the SCE workshops.

• Article for Transfusion Today

A draft article was written for Transfusion Today, summarizing vignettes from the Gothenburg and Barcelona workshops. The ISBT office is assisting in formatting the questions to be interactive online. Hopefully, this article will also raise awareness (and attendance!) for the workshop in Milan.

• ISBT Code of Ethics

The basic ethical principles of the code of ethics are unchanged. We are reviewing the text to add something about policies of the ISBT itself and mention patient blood management. After consultation with the head of the Cellular Therapies Working Party, Reinhard Henschler, it was decided to maintain the focus of the Code of Ethics primarily on transfusion and not expand into novel cellular therapies. Documents from other societies including the International Society for Cellular Therapies could be added as an addendum to our document and also placed on the ISBT website. We are aiming to have a draft for review by ISBT working parties and the Board at the Milan meeting..

• Draft Advocacy and Endorsement Policies

We continued discussion of the draft advocacy and endorsement policies and documents developed by the ISBT office, and some suggestions were provided to the ISBT office about general policies and draft forms. We also reviewed possible use of our logo for a webinar program, a good example of the practical issues involved in these requests.

• We provided a draft policy recommendation to the ISBT office about gifts to ISBT Board members.