Dr. A. Seth Greenwald, founder of the Current Concepts in Joint Replacement® (CCJR®) meetings, has agreed to sell his educational asset—now the largest independent education meeting dedicated solely to joint arthroplasty in the world—to The Hip Society and The Knee Society, in partnership.
The Hip Society, which started in 1968 to advance the knowledge and treatment of hip disorders to improve the lives of patients, will co-own CCJR with The Knee Society, which was organized to advance the care of patients with knee disorders through leadership in education and research.
Notably, eight members of the Knee Society’s board and seven members of the Hip Society’s board as well as numerous Society members are contemporary faculty members for the CCJR meetings.
This combination has a sense of inevitability.
“We’re very excited” said Douglas E. Padgett, M.D., president of The Hip Society. “The significance of this milestone in the history of both organizations cannot be overestimated. We are embarking on a new chapter in pursuing our mission of leadership in arthroplasty education.”
Dr. Padgett has been a CCJR faculty member for more than a decade.
Robert Barrack, M.D., president of The Knee Society, who’s been a CCJR faculty member for almost 30 years, chuckled when we asked him about this deal.
“I remember when Seth first asked me to be a faculty member. He called me up and we talked for three hours about the meeting agenda. I felt as though Seth and I were creating the CCJR agenda. When I arrived at the meeting, however, I found that he’d spent three hours with each of the other 20 faculty members and they all thought that they had created the program.”
Dr. Greenwald agrees. “I’m relentless on the telephone and by email. My interactions with the faculty do create the program, foster my orthopaedic education and the growth of the meetings reflects their ongoing commitment to orthopaedic education.”
As does CCJR’s reputation. Today, getting Seth’s phone call, lending your hand to the agenda and being asked to serve as a member of the CCJR faculty is an honor. No accident that so many of the board members of these top societies are also CCJR faculty.
As Dr. Barrack told OTW, “CCJR’s legacy is the gold standard in arthroplasty education, nationally and internationally.”
