gastroesophageal reflux disease [GERD], nonulcer dyspepsia), and revision of gastroenterology education and faculty continuing medical education to assist gastroenterologists in the management of patients with impairments in cognition, mobility, and mood. Some of these issues, such as colon cancer screening, are being addressed in other reports to the Future Trends Committee. Others, such as defining standards of care and educational requirements, are already the focus of initiatives by other organizations such as the American Geriatric Society in conjunction with the Hartford Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, the D. W. Reynolds Foundation, and the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). It is essential that the AGA be an active participant in any initiatives that are likely to impact practice, and this may be the time to review and coordinate these efforts to achieve the best results for our patients and our specialty. At this time, there is an opportunity for the AGA to step in and take a proactive role in defining what gastroenterology is going to be for the next 10–20 years. The AGA Future Trends Committee: Charge and Process The AGA Future Trends Committee was created in 2004 to … further the AGA Strategic Plan by identifying and characterizing important trends in clinical practice and scientific-technological developments in the world in general and medicine and gastroenterology in particular that potentially will impact the AGA and/or its members in the coming 3–5 years or beyond and to make strategic recommendations to the Governing Board on how AGA should deal with those trends and developments. These trends and developments may be economic, demographic, practice-based, scientific/technological or political in nature. More specifically, the committee is charged with preparing a report (or reports) for the AGA Governing Board that describes the trends or developments it has identified, postulates their impact on gastroenterology practice and/or research as appropriate, and presents specific recommendations for action by the AGA in terms of policy and programs. The committee is also asked to monitor these trends and technologies as they play out over time. In July 2004, the AGA Leadership Cabinet suggested several topics that the Future Trends Committee should address. Realizing that the committee could not realistically consider all of them, criteria were developed to prioritize the topics and others that might be added in the future. These criteria were as follows: In October 2004, a crude Delphi process was used to determine the trends and developments that should be the focus of the committee’s work. Committee members were asked to assign priority scores to the items in the following list, which was based on the suggestions of the Leadership Cabinet and supplemented by AGA staff and others. This process was done via the mail. Computerization and digitization of gastroenterology practice. Committee members were asked to score each item against each of the priority criteria noted previously using a scale in which 1 represents large effect and 3 represents small effect (on gastroenterology practice and research). The total scores of each topic were then summed and ranked. The 4 highest priority scores that resulted from this ranking were as follows: Because the AGA was already investigating the ramifications of the obesity epidemic, the Future Trends Committee decided to concentrate on the other 3 topics.