S5 - E15 - Highlights from SLD Think-Tank 2024, a Public Health Approach to MASH

Surfing the MASH Tsunami

#SLDThinkTank 2024 co-chair Jörn Schattenberg and SLD Think Tank co-chair Jeff Lazarus, participants Maja Thiele and Mike Betel and SurfingMASH co-hosts Louise Campbell and Roger Green convene to discuss #SLDThinkTank, a conference designed to innovate solutions for addressing large issues, many involving public health, in conquering MASLD.
00:00:00 - Surf's Up: Season 5 Episode 15
Standard lead-in, including brief quotes taken directly from the episode.
00:02:45 - Introduction
Opening comments discussing the aggressive travel schedules of our guests.
00:04:02 - Meeting Maja Thiele and LiverAIM
Maja introduces herself to our audience, including her "One Fact:" she has been a radio host in Denmark. Jörn mentions that Maja is about to start "the biggest randomized controlled trial in hepatology" through LiverAIM, an extremely ambitious project funded through the EU Innovative Health Initiative.
00:12:47 - Groundbreaker
Each panelist shares one piece of good news from the previous week.
00:15:38 - #SLD ThinkTank 2024 design
Jeff provides background and rationale for the #SLDThinkTank 2024 design, going back to an initial meeting in 2019 and the first two years of INCBCN (S4, E13 and E23; S3, E18 and E 24). The event included five sections, two workshops and an innovative concept called Open Spaces. Jörn provides color about how Open Spaces actually worked.
00:20:13 - Participants' experiences
Maja praises Open Spaces, which she describes as "especially fruitful" due to the diversity of attendees. After Mike seconds this comment, she describes her Open Spaces experience.
00:25:53 - Meeting highlights
Roger asks participants to describe their highlights from the meeting. Jeff describes the paper(s) that will result from this meeting, lists the ten major issues the group developed for ending the SLD pandemic, after which he elaborates on a few of these.
00:29:40 - The Magic Wand exercise
Jörn: at the end of the first session, chairs gave participants a "Magic Wand" to achieve their goals. He notes a consensus that "we ha[ve] mechanisms and biomarkers," but face major public and policy challenges if we are to slow the MASLD growth rate meaningfully. Maja notes the long timeline from research to implementation.
00:33:09 - Improving utilization
Mike discusses prevention separate from treatment: There are only 94 FibroScan devices in Canada, and even these are underutilized. The group discusses what will be necessary to improve scanner use in a future world where having medicines motivates medical stakeholders.
To Jeff, this discussion provided a sense of how the Open Space session worked and why this is the right design for big issues like "getting better bang for the buck."
00:43:59 - NIT Summit
Jörn discusses the NIT Summit, which preceded the #SLDThinkTank. He sees this as a first step toward acknowledging that we need to train more people and find ways to train them better. Jeff agrees.
Maya describes Elliott Tapper's state-of-the-art talk on social media. Her takeaway: video is a valuable new format, especially for younger stakeholders.
00:47:39 - Wrap-Up Questions
Roger asks the group what other topics from #SLDThinkTank 2024 to discuss before closing. No two panelists' answers are redundant. Finally, Roger asks how non-practitioners can help drive wider awareness and action. Again, answers vary widely.
00:55:45 - Question of the Week
Roger asks listeners to describe "one way that making better use of the tools we have today (diagnostics and medicines) can make a major dent in the MASLD pandemic."
00:56:38 - Business section
This week's news on increasing interest in SurfingMASH, our first newsletter, the Stephen Harrison Memorial page, upcoming episodes and this week's Vault.