Address from Prof. Henk Hartgrink, New IGCA President and 16^th IGCC Congress President

Dear members of the IGCA,

The IGCA was founded in 1995 and now celebrates its 30^th anniversary!!!

The purpose of the IGCA is to bring people together in order to improve the outcome of gastric cancer patients. With the bi-annually congresses we fulfill this goal.

In the past 30 years 16 International Gastric Cancer Congresses have been organized. The most recent one was in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. With more than 950 participants from 57 different countries we have discussed gastric cancer in its broadest form. The social program further improved the community feeling. I express my heartfelt gratitude to all participants for their contributions to make this congress a great success.

Recently several working groups (13 in total) have been founded to address special topics of gastric cancer in more detail. All these groups are very active and all IGCA members are very welcome to participate in these working groups. Below you will find the list of working groups with their contact persons.

Our journal Gastric Cancer with an impact factor of 6.0 is the basis to share scientific information on gastric cancer.

For the next two years as president of IGCA I am looking forward to encourage you all to contribute to the association and the journal, and to participate in the working groups.

IGCA Working Groups and their chairpersons

1)	Poorly cohesive gastric cancer working group - Dr. Heike Grabsch (Netherlands) & Dr. Rupert Langer (Austria)
2)	IGCA Surgical Video Webinar - Dr. Hyuk-Joon Lee (Korea), Dr. Souya Nunobe (Japan), Dr. Huang Hua (China)
3)	Stage IV gastric cancer consensus forum - Dr. Paolo Morgagni (Italy)
4)	IGCA Peritoneal Carcinomatosis group - Dr. Jimmy So (Singapore)
5)	IGCA DATA-Bank Project - Dr. Vivian Strong (USA)
6)	IGCA EGJ Guidelines working group - Dr. Satoru Matsuda (Japan)
7)	IGCA Robot gastrectomy interest group - Dr. Maria Bencivenga (Italy)
8)	Working groups for EGC (non-cardia/GEJ cancer) - Dr. Takuji Gotoda (Japan), Dr. Hyunsoo Chung (Korea)
9)	Gastric Cancer Health Equity Group - Dr. Yanghee WOO (USA)
10)	QOL WG - Jessie Elliotte (Department of Surgery, Trinty college of University of Dublin, Irland)
11)	MDT WG - Ziyu Li, Peking University Cancer Hospital (China)
12)	Gastric Cancer Prevention - WG Jin Young PARK (Lead, Gastric Cancer Prevention Team, International Agency for Research on Cancer/ World Health Organization)
13)	Habilitation WG - Dr Emer Guinan, Associate Professor in Cancer Rehabilitation and Survivorship, Discipline of Physiotherapy, School of Medicine, Trinity College the University of Dublin

If you would like to participate in the working group, please contact the Secretariat of IGCA at igca@jfcr.or.jp.

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