UEG's prospects for the future

Every 4 years, UEG develops an updated Strategic Plan for the federation that guides the association's actions in subsequent years. Based on the previous Strategic Plan, we developed a draft for the Strategic Plan 2023–2026. This draft was thoroughly discussed within the UEG Executive Committee, the Council and all UEG Committees, then after revisions which took into account the comments received, was finalised by the UEG Council. The Strategic Plan describes UEG's core values and organisational vitality and identifies six strategic drivers (Figure 1). Here, we would like to briefly summarise the key points for our colleagues in the specialist and national member societies and other stakeholder organisations that are part of the myUEG Community. A main strategic focus is UEG Week, which in 2022 again was a stunning success, with a vibrant atmosphere, allowing for education and scientific exchange at the highest quality. Clearly, UEG Week is at the heart of our activities, and our wide array of other offerings have also become increasingly important. After two completely virtual UEG Week meetings, this year's hybrid congress was attended by nearly 11,000 participants, 8000 of which attended in‐person in Vienna, Austria, and actively engaged onsite. We plan to continue with the concept of the hybrid UEG Week and will again make the recorded sessions (600 in 2022) available to our international myUEG Community via our vast UEG Library. Preparations are already underway for next year's UEG Week meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. The next strategic driver shown in Figure 1 is education. From the very beginning of UEG, this was also one of the key pillars contributing to the success of our federation. Besides face‐to‐face courses such as the UEG Summer School and seminars, UEG's Online Education offerings such as webinars, Online Courses and our Career Development initiative have become increasingly popular and well attended, with a marked boost during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The support of research in digestive health is pivotal, especially since the burden of digestive diseases is projected to increase in the years to come, as outlined in the ‘White Book 2’, commissioned by UEG. Here, UEG can play out to its fullest potential. Many digestive diseases relate to life‐style factors, with the burden spreading from obesity and related diseases such as diabetes mellitus and fatty liver, via alcohol‐related diseases including chronic pancreatitis, all the way to malignant diseases. Therefore, UEG considers prevention and screening for detection of early disease stages an important priority that will represent an even larger part of its future research engagement. Supporting clinical studies is also considered to be of key importance for advancing medical practice. In addition to offering courses and webinars on research topics, UEG plans to actively participate in EU‐funded research projects by offering the dissemination part to such consortia, and eventually wishes to take a step further and lead the application process for some collaborative research projects in the future. We continue to offer support for constituting consortia that apply for European grants. Our UEG journal is another important piece in the overall strategy to further disseminating knowledge. Since its inception in 2013, it has become a huge success and has found its place amongst the finest periodicals in the field of digestive health. Our journal is venturing in new directions, amongst which is the concept of relying in our young generation as trainee editors. UEG has additionally created workshops on how to write publications and how to best review them. UEG Quality of Care, while working side‐by‐side with UEG Education, has focused on the support for the development of guidelines Since the publication of the first guideline developed in association with UEG in 2017, a total of 14 such evidence‐based guidelines have been developed. It is important to note that these are driven by the member and national societies, whilst UEG supports the process by providing methodological assistance, financial support and a platform for distribution, for example, with the extremely popular GI Guidelines App as the one place where digestive health guidelines can be freely accessed. We consider the GI Guidelines App an important way to facilitate the access to reliable and evidence‐based information for all healthcare professionals in the digestive health space, including members of the national and subspeciality societies as well as other digestive health‐related disciplines. Our public affairs activities build upon education, quality of care and particularly research, or the lack thereof. Here, lobbying in Brussels is pivotal to raise the awareness for digestive health, by engaging with all stakeholders including patient organisations, and publishing position papers on timely issues. Speaking with one