How One Medical Meeting Weaves Social Impact Into the Program

ATS leaders met with students to discuss opportunities in the medical field.

Giving back and building forward in the destinations that host American Thoracic Society’s (ATS) events is something that Emily Catanzaro, CMP, the society’s senior vice president of meeting services, takes very much to heart.

At ATS conferences, social good initiatives are baked into the program, from community service activities for volunteers to campaigns encouraging attendees to actively support minority-owned, local small businesses in their host destinations during their stay.

Catanzaro thinks all planners should give their events’ potential social impact in the cities where they meet the same consideration as their economic impact.

Emily Cantazaro

“Social impact is not an add-on to the meeting experience; it’s a responsibility,” she told Convene. “Hosting conferences in a destination with a strong hospitality infrastructure creates a unique opportunity to channel economic activity into meaningful community engagement. Integrating volunteer initiatives, partnerships with local nonprofits, and legacy projects allow an event to extend its footprint beyond convention center walls and into neighborhoods that benefit directly from service and investment.

“I think it’s a planner’s responsibility to leave the city better than you found it, and to look outside of your mission and your goals and have conversations with the city to understand, ‘How can we help? We appreciate your hosting us. What do the people here need the most?’”

At ATS, some community service projects may seem outside their mission, but are aligned with their broad public health goals. The society, which represents health-care professionals who advance respiratory, critical care, and sleep medicine, works with policymakers on issues like air pollution, climate change, and smoking cessation. “We have staff in Washington that does incredible work,” Catanzaro said, advocating “for the Clean Air Act and working on issues like vaping, particularly with the youth, and environmental issues that impact us all, whether we are familiar with the thoracic community or not.”

At the ATS 2025 International Conference in San Francisco last May, which attracted over 14,000 attendees from more than 100 countries, the society “left a lasting impact on its host city and brought its goal of health equity to life” through outreach, partnerships, and support for local organizations, according to a website page listing its community activities. Much of that effort focused on engaging with youth, especially those in underrepresented communities.

Future Focused

Before the conference kicked off in San Francisco, ATS hosted its first-ever community outreach event in partnership with the Homeless Children’s Network (HCN), with the overarching goal of creating pathways for future leaders in thoracic medicine. Students from HCN’s Jabali Youth Advocacy Program were invited to an afternoon of “educational exploration and mentorship,” where ATS executive committee members joined local physicians to guide a panel discussion. Students were given a chance to ask questions afterwards.

“What’s really inspiring about this engagement is that many of our leaders are from different parts of the world, and they have very humble beginnings,” Catanzaro said. “They can connect with someone who may feel that they don’t have access to a mentor” or imagine that pursuing a career in respiratory medicine is possible. “It’s really nice to hear the exchange and the storytelling that happens between ATS leadership and the youth community. We like to understand, ‘What barriers as a local youth are you facing?’”

That focus on engaging local youth spilled over into a family event several days later during the conference, when ATS partnered with community leaders and health-care providers to host “Melanin Magnificence,” which the society’s webpage described as “a joyful and affirming event at the local YMCA celebrating Black health, wellness, and heritage.”

In addition to music, art, and food, the event offered free health talks given by ATS volunteers and local clinicians.

“The hope is that these opportunities to meet and talk with ATS members allow people to be more comfortable talking with specialists in general and encouraging their family members and friends to being open to meeting with a specialist before an emergency arises,” Jamil Paden, director of Diversity, Equity, and Community Outreach at ATS, said in the post on the website.

Orlando Bound

At ATS 2026, to be held May 15-20 at the Orange County Convention Center, “we’ll be working with the Boys & Girls Club of Orlando, as well as The Center Orlando,” a nonprofit for the LGBT+ community, Catanzaro said, on social good projects. But ahead of that, the society has already given Orlando a taste of its commitment to giving back. When the ATS board of directors met in Orlando in February, they took time out of their meeting to put together care packages for Zebra Youth, a local organization offering housing, mental health services, and support for LGBTQ+ youth.

“When you think about respiratory, you may not think about that community, but it’s very important to our members to support people who are in need,” she said. “I love that ATS is not only aligning with the youth to talk about opportunities in the medical field, but we’re also aligning with groups that are in need and are so important to our community’s values.”

‘It Is the Agenda’

“At ATS 2025, the society proved that community engagement doesn’t have to happen outside the agenda — it is the agenda,” ATS said on a web page describing its social impact activities in San Francisco. “From uplifting youth voices and supporting diverse businesses, to taking on providing health care for the unhoused and improving air quality for all, ATS members and conference attendees transformed their values into action.”

“On the agenda” also referred to the educational program itself. A conference keynote, “Providing Health Care for Unhoused Individuals,” aimed to give ATS attendees a framework to understand “why so many people are unhoused, and instill the possibility that we can get ourselves out of this crisis,” said Margot Kushel, M.D., director of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative and UCSF Action Research Center for Health Equity, one of the keynote speakers. “We’re often meeting unhoused patients at the worst time in their lives, but that isn’t their entire trajectory,” she said.

Kushel connected the session to the work ATS members do, noting that “health-care workers have an enormous say in policy, and I always hope that we will use our voice to make health care better but also use our voice for issues adjacent to health care.”

Michelle Russell is Convene’s editor in chief.

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