2023 AGM - Securing change for the future
October 03, 2023
Our Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held on Friday 29 September, chaired by Roger Siddle, Chair of our Board of Trustees.
The AGM covered key agenda items, including the presentation of the Action for M.E. Chief Executive’s report for 2022 – 2023, the Treasurer’s report and the Chief Executive’s Forward View 2023 - 2024. In addition, you can now view our 2022-2023 Annual Report here.
During the AGM, our CEO, Sonya Chowdhury, highlighted the crucial support we have been providing through our vital support services, having dealt with over 3000 requests for support this past year. She highlighted our commitment to expanding accessibility to these services, with a particular focus on reaching more young people and children with M.E. and their families.
"We know there are many more people who could potentially access our services and we have done a lot of work to reduce waiting lists and are very much keen to reach more young people and children with M.E. and their families."
We were pleased to report that in the first year of delivering our holistic Healthcare Services, we improved health through 1,200 consultations and provided £10,000 of bursaries to ensure people could access the healthcare they needed through us.
Sonya emphasised Action for M.E.’s commitment to driving high-quality research in the field of M.E. and ensuring all our research will have patient and public involvement at its very heart. A core focus is on delivering the DecodeME study, with the study having achieved 19,000 invites to provide DNA so far since August 2022, edging closer to our 20,000 target. The deadline for participation is 5pm on Wednesday, November 15th, and the cutoff for submitting your DNA sample is Wednesday, January 31st.
Additionally, Sonya shared the exciting news that the first Clare Francis Research fellowship has been awarded to Audrey Ryback through the Genetics Centre of Excellence at the University of Edinburgh and will be supervised by Professor Chris Ponting. Audrey will be researching the impact of ME/CFS on mitochondrial function as identified by The ME/CFS Priority Setting Partnership, research priority number 10. You can read more here.
Sonya discussed our commitment to ensuring M.E. stays at the forefront of investment by the UK Government and expressed Action for M.E.’s increased level of focus on our work in supporting and shaping the UK Government Strategy. This includes the Department of Health and Social Care’s Delivery Plan on ME/CFS, which has now opened its consultation phase. You can read the latest updates here.
“Action for M.E. was mentioned in 5 parliamentary debates, and we’ve had a huge series of meetings with MPs, with Peers and with MSPs, and that’s really important to make sure M.E. stays at the forefront of policy and political decision-making."
We are also delighted to share that we have appointed Moore Stephens as auditor of the Charity and authorisation of the Board of Trustees of the Charity to fix the remuneration of the auditors, and appointed Eleanor Bulmer to our Board of Trustees too.
We wish to thank everyone who was able to attend our AGM, and for everyone who has continued to support us and our work. A recording of the AGM is available now on our YouTube channel for those who were unable to attend.
