The AOSpine Education Commission (AOSEC) is the educational steering body of AOSpine International. Why did you feel it was necessary to create the AOSpine Task Force (TF) teams as well?

The AOSEC has executive and operational responsibilities. This commission, consisting of seven members, meets twice a year. This group is too small to handle the workload associated with the strategic goals of global education. Therefore, the creation of AOSpine TF teams serves as a means to bring in broader expertise and human resources to complement the work of the AOSEC. The TFs roles are aligned with AOSpine’s educational aspirations and are project focused. They are led by surgeon "champions" and are supported by individual AOSEC members.

How effective are the TFs at achieving their individual goals?

The TFs have been a tremendous success. This reflects the enthusiasm, engagement, and commitment of all their champions and members. The accomplishments, after only 1 year, are very impressive and are listed in Table 1.

Do you think these groups will continue to work towards their goals in the future?

Given their proven success, the role and remits of these TFs are likely to increase as more projects become necessary. The future challenge will lie in recruiting more TF members who share both the interests and passions of the present TFs. I would encourage any member who is keen to contribute and make meaningful, long-term changes to our education offerings to become a TF member.

Thinking specifically about the Faculty Development TF, do you have any updates for the AOSpine faculty members?

All the faculty members in our community should be aware that this group is working exceptionally hard to ensure that we offer the best faculty development programs to our members. The TFs work very closely with experienced educationalists and the AO Education Institute, and meet regularly online. As with the other TFs, we receive input from all five regions. This is imperative to make sure that the decisions made will actually work on the different continents. With regard to faculty development programs, this is quite straightforward as the educational theory stands in all countries. However, without the TF members, we can never be sure if the implementation of these theories will work. The priorities for the TFs this year are: 1) to provide the regions with the most up-to-date information needed to effectively train our faculty, chairpersons, and educational advisors as well as other educational leaders and 2) to create a realistic selection process for our faculty to ensure that we have the best possible teachers at our events. If you are interested in finding out more details, please click here.