As a society we take climate sustainability seriously. We have carefully considered how best to balance sustainability priorities with the ESO mission to reduce the burden of stroke in Europe by advancing knowledge, promoting effective European collaboration, showcasing new stroke science, and leading education and quality improvement for stroke care in Europe.
We acknowledge that sustainable conferencing has never been more important than today. As a strategic goal, over the next years ESO will transition to a policy of holding its conferences in locations which are accessible to the majority of attendees by ground transportation, to encourage sustainable travel such as by train. In addition, to reduce some of the carbon impact associated with international travel, ESO has financially supported “Trees for all” and their project “Kibale Oeganda” for its recent in-person conferences. A significant financial donation will also be made for ESOC 2023.
ESO – as a conscious and responsible society – also needs to consider longevity and financial sustainability and needs to work wisely with its accrued membership and sponsoring funds. Holding a hybrid event presents twice the cost of a regular conference and cannot be financially sustained. We need to consider the longevity of ESO as a society and be accountable for all our additional initiatives which we supported throughout the year.
Therefore for 2023 we set our focus on a very attractive onsite conference, supported with digital information through our conference live-studio and availability of certain on-demand content for our members after the event through our eSTEP platform.