An Interview with FACTMS Leadership

Article by Jordan Galerkin - Scientific Writer

An Interview with FACTMS Leadership

The Foundation for the Advancement of Clinical TMS, or FACTMS, was founded in 2022 by the Board of Directors of the Clinical TMS Society. We met with the President of FACTMS, Dr. Randy Pardell, and Executive Director Anna Taylor to learn more about the Foundation.

FACTMS was launched with the help of the Foundation Special Committee created under Dr. Mohamed Abdelghani’s presidency and chaired by Dr. Randy Pardell, who at the time was the immediate past president of the Society and a longstanding CTMSS member. Dr. Pardell was instrumental in the founding of FACTMS and remarked that the idea for a foundation went back to 2018. “[The idea] was to develop a nonprofit, charitable organization to help increase awareness of TMS…and increased access,” Dr. Pardell explains. A foundation could do things the Society could not, such as raise money and directly fund projects.

The Launch of FACTMS

“[The Foundation] was always on the agenda of our board meetings and our Executive Committee meeting, but nobody was doing anything about it. And if people know me – I just can’t stand that! I’m always saying, ‘We have to do something; we have to make it work!’” Dr. Pardell says with a laugh. “During the strategic planning meeting of the CTMSS Board of Directors in June of 2021, the board and I did a SWOT analysis and made it a goal for the Society to form FACTMS…We got the legal paperwork done in May of 2022, started working on the IRS forms and bylaws in the fall of 2022, and had our first board meeting in January of 2023.”

FACTMS is made up of the Board of Directors, Executive Committee, Education and Research Funding Committee, Development Committee, Clinic Expansion Committee, and Patient and Family Advisory Committee. Many of the members held committee or board positions within the Society as well. The Executive Committee is led by President Dr. Randy Pardell and Vice President Dr. Ian Cook. Dr. Kevin Kinback is the chair of the Education and Research Funding Committee, Dr. Martha Koo is the chair of the Development Committee, Dr. Mohamed Abdelghani is chair of the Clinic Expansion Committee, and Cindy Elkins is the chair of the Patient and Family Advisory Committee.

The Bob Sammons Fund for Clinical TMS Research

After the first board meeting, the FACTMS team was ready to hit the ground running. They began with the formation of the Bob Sammons Fund for Clinical TMS Research, in honor of Dr. Bob Sammons. Dr. Sammons is a current board member of FACTMS and a former board member and committee co-chair of the Society. “Bob Sammons had informed us that he was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. I really felt that Bob had given so much to our Society, so I asked him what was important to him [in terms of] funding research,” Dr. Pardell says. “He said he would love to have our foundation fund clinical research…So we formed the Bob Sammons fund and held a fundraiser at the 2023 [Society] Annual Meeting in Colorado Springs at the Golden Bee and it was a smashing success!”

Anna led the efforts to host this first FACTMS fundraiser. “We honored Tony Barker and John Rothwell…54 people attended, and we raised $13,000. It was a great first event…and a great way to kick off the foundation and to recognize Bob and the founding fathers [of TMS],” she explains. They continued their momentum and worked with PULSES Director and APA ACROSS Representative Dr. Michelle Cochran to host an event during the APA Annual Meeting in May.

“We did an event in San Francisco at the Mina Gallery honoring Dr. Mark George…and we had about 63 attendees. It was another successful event that we turned around in a short amount of time, and we raised over $8,000,” Anna says. “It’s also a great way to create awareness and get people excited about the Foundation.” The FACTMS team hopes to present the first award for the Bob Sammons Fund at the Society’s 2024 annual meeting. Donations to the fund can be made here.

FACTMS Initiatives

In addition to the Bob Sammons Fund, FACTMS is pursuing several other initiatives that were launched in part thanks to their newsletter. “When we put out our first newsletter, we got a response from one of our fellow psychiatrists, Laura De Luca Hirsch, who said she wanted to support what we were doing,” says Dr. Pardell. Dr. De Luca donated to the Bob Sammons Fund, and she also sits on the board of her late husband’s foundation, the Neil S. Hirsch Foundation. “She said they were really interested in supporting our initiatives, and her brother is also a TMS psychiatrist…they requested a series of proposals to present to their board,” Dr. Pardell explains.

“We got hopping!” he says with a smile. The FACTMS Executive Committee met with the Development Committee and the Clinic Expansion Committee to draft a 23-page proposal for the Neil S. Hirsch Foundation. The Neil S. Hirsch Foundation expressed interest in funding two of the initiatives to start with. The first is low-cost or free TMS clinics, and the second supports research grants in TMS treatment for neurological conditions. “They said if we moved on the clinics then they would consider funding all of our initiatives,” Dr. Pardell explains. FACTMS is looking at working with an established charitable clinic in Florida that is interested in participating.

“It’s wonderful because psychiatric residents rotate through that clinic and we will be able to increase teaching and awareness of TMS,” Dr. Pardell says. “We’re also reaching out to potential clinics in the Pacific Northwest as well as central Europe...Our Clinic Expansion Committee includes Dr. Mark George, the father of clinical TMS, for whom it’s very important to be able to provide low-cost or free TMS treatment around the world,” he explains.

In addition to these first initiatives, FACTMS has plans to help fund the Society’s new journal. “If the journal becomes an open-source journal, where the authors have to pay to subscribe or publish, we as the Foundation will support those entry fees,” Dr. Pardell says. They would like to participate in funding travel scholarships for Society PULSES courses. “We recognize that it’s tough for residents, who have a modest income, to be able to travel…We really want to support increased awareness and training of our young psychiatrists out there,” Dr. Pardell explains.

Help FACTMS Advance the Field of TMS

“Our Society members are going to be very important for fulfilling our initiatives, and we really encourage them to participate with the Foundation. Any small donation is well worth the effort…we are all doing it out of the passion we have for how our patients have benefited from TMS,” Dr. Pardell says. “We really want to pay it forward so that more patients around the world will have the opportunity to have TMS therapy.”

In addition to donating to the initiatives below, Society members can help support FACTMS by attending the next major fundraising event, to be held during the Society’s 2024 Annual Meeting in London. “We’re going to do a luxury river cruise on the Thames on June 15th,” Anna shares. “It will be a four-hour cruise with entertainment and fine dining, and that will be our annual fundraiser.” Registration will open closer to the event. For more information, sign up for the FACTMS newsletter.

FACTMS initiatives include:

• Bob Sammons Fund for Clinical TMS Research
• PULSES Travel Assistance
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Journal of the Clinical TMS Society
• TMS Awareness Campaign
• CTMSS Annual Meeting Research Poster Presentations
• Neurotherapeutic TMS Research Grant
• TMS Treatment Centers

To learn more about these initiatives or to donate, visit www.factms.org.