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Another year: 12 months of outstanding achievements and challenges met! Follow us through EASL’s highlights of 2021. 

January

EASL started 2021 motivated and ready to serve the community of the Home of Hepatology!

• To launch the year, we hosted a webinar on EASL Recommendations on Treatment of Hepatitis C.

February

• As usual, February held one of the most important meetings of the year: the Liver Cancer Summit, that was held digitally and attracted 622 delegates.
• On 11 February, EASL recognised the International Day of Girls and Women in Science by honouring women in hepatology. We gave the floor to 11 inspiring members of our community who shared their vision and the challenges remaining.
• Finally, the EASL policy statement on the use of COVID-19 vaccines in people with chronic liver disease, hepatobiliary cancer, and liver transplant recipients was published in the Journal of Hepatology.

March

For this last month of winter, EASL connected with the community through:

• a fascinating live webinar COVID-19 vaccination in patients with liver diseases
• a relaunch of the international reporting registry COVID-Hep 2.0. Accordingly, EASL encouraged healthcare professionals to share the registry among its networks
• joining Instagram! Follow us on @easl.news

April

April witnessed a lot of firsts.

• The EASL blog, Liver matters: Voices and views from our community, was launched. It offers portraits of members of our community, tips and tricks for career development, and testimonials.
• EASL’s Young Investigators Task Force launched its first webinar dedicated to career development.

May

May was a lively month 

• The YIs Task Force said goodbye to Sabela Lens, Espen Melum, and Salvatore Piano. We thank them for their commitment and excellent contributions made to EASL. At the same time, we welcomed three new members: Mattias Mandorfer, Johanne Poisson, and Philipp Schwabl.
• EASL Campus, EASL’s eLearning hub, has been accredited with 47 CME Credits for its 22 e-learning modules.
• The organisers of the JHEP Supplement New Concepts and Perspectives in Decompensated Cirrhosis hosted two accompanying webinars to summarise and discuss the current literature on decompensated cirrhosis.

June

EASL entered the most intense period of the year: the ILC month

• ILC 2021, held digitally, brought together 6,340 delegates from 111 countries. The congress hosted 155 sessions, including 13 EASL Studio Sessions, live from EASL’s temporary Home of Hepatology at Domaine de Choully in Geneva. We also introduced Livy as EASL’s official mascot.
• At the 2021 General Assembly, Phil Newsome handed over the role of Secretary General to Thomas Berg. Aleksander Krag was elected as Vice-Secretary and Virginia Hernandez-Gea and Jean-Charles Nault replaced Maria Reig and Pierre-Emmanuel Rautou on the Scientific Committee.
• The Journal of Hepatology achieved unprecedented results with a 2020 impact factor of 25.083, up from the 2019 score of 20.582. JHEP Reports was accepted for indexing by PubMed Central and Scopus.

July

While Livy and most of the community were enjoying some well-deserved R&R, the Journal of Hepatology published the EASL Position Paper: Systemic treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, by Jordi Bruix et al.

August

Through the sunny month of August, we ran EASL’s Open Letter campaign with 10 asks to improve liver cancer care. If you haven’t done so, you can still sign the letter here!

September

Back to school!

• Starting with the clinical school in Frankfurt, Germany, on Management of acute-on-chronic liver failure jointly organised by EASL and ERN.
• Almost 500 delegates joined us online to explore the latest scientific developments in NAFLD and NASH during NAFLD Summit 2021.

October

The autumn was a flurry of EASL activities.

• The monothematic conference on Bleeding, Thrombosis, and Vascular Liver Diseases was held both online and in-person in Geneva. Read about it here. In partnership with AALSD, we hosted the EASL-AASLD Endpoints meeting.
• EASL contributed to Liver Cancer Awareness Month through high-level advocacy events with key policymakers:

• Beating liver cancer in Europe – the empowerment of prevention and early detection was co-organised with the European Liver Patients’ Association (ELPA), under the patronage of the Slovenian presidency of the Council of the European Union
• The very first episode of EASL Studio, was launched and dedicated to liver cancer awareness month. This first live edition attracted over 500 viewers from 63 countries. Catch up with the other EASL Studio episodes here.

November

• The final EASL School of the year Progress, pitfalls, and challenges in the management of portal hypertension took place in Barcelona.
• Key findings of a jointly run survey together with ESOT, ELITA, and ILTS were published in November. The survey, sent to 470 centres, set out to explore how patients, healthcare professionals, and liver transplant centres across the world were affected by COVID-19 – in their clinical care and waiting-list management.
• To finish up the month, we gathered representatives from liver patient associations for the EASL Patient Forum 2021: Health literacy to empower patients and address inequities.

December

• This last month of the year started with a major advocacy milestone: The EASL–Lancet Liver Commission which marked the publication of the report of the EASL–Lancet Liver Commission: protecting the next generation of Europeans against liver disease complications and premature mortality.
• 2021 ended on a fun note with EASL’s Festive Season Calendar. Follow Livy and take the 24 mini-challenges that await you here.

How about you? What have been your achievements this year? Comment below and share your 2021 highlights with us!