Our society is proud to have developed as an inclusive and diverse body with a council that is mixed and balanced in terms of professional group, gender and diversity, reflective of our wider membership. The recent review by Baroness Kennedy written at the request of the Royal college of surgeons of England, however, makes for difficult and uncomfortable reading https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/-/media/files/rcs/about-rcs/about-our-mission/rcs-england-diversity-report-11-august.pdf.
As the representative professional society for the treatment of people with severe and complex obesity we are acutely aware of the difficulties and discrimination frequently experienced by our patients who can be stigmatised in many ways by members of society in general in all aspects of their life. We as BOMSS are committed to further promoting the values of inclusivity, equality and diversity, within our society, the wider speciality of bariatric and metabolic surgery, and particularly for our patients in broader society.
We have been carefully considering how best we describe and document diversity and inclusivity, and where necessary implement change. We are working closely with our colleagues in sister surgical organisations affiliated to the Royal College of Surgeons of England, to determine how we might best do this and our future annual reports will all clearly describe our progress.