A new report identifies cost as the chief barrier keeping international stakeholders from engaging with U.S. medical associations.

Navigating the Rocky Shores of Global Expansion, released last week by the consulting firm Global Navigators in collaboration with the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, is based on a survey of more than 3,100 physicians based outside of the United States. Overall, respondents gave U.S. medical societies high marks: More than half (52 percent) said they would recommend them for “information/guidance related to specialty or clinical practice.”

However, only 40 percent of participants say they consider U.S. practice guidelines important, and more than half (58 percent) say cost challenges are a key barrier to their engagement with U.S. groups.

Global Navigators Founder and CEO Jakub Konysz, MBA, IOM, CAE, said the findings demonstrate that international physicians are not necessarily paid as well as their U.S. counterparts, or are as likely to have association-related costs covered by an employer. Generally, international physicians (58 percent) cover their own costs for U.S. memberships and international meeting travel (41 percent).

“Nobody’s paying for their membership, nobody’s paying for their attendance and meetings and engagement in U.S. medical societies, even though that engagement might advance their education,” he said. “It’s not seen as valuable for them to invest as much as we think they would.”

However, the appetite for engagement with U.S. associations is still strong: Two-thirds (66 percent) said they would be likely to attend a local meeting of their society, and 44 percent say they would be very likely to attend a U.S.-based virtual meeting. 

The report argues that medical associations are missing an opportunity to engage with younger physicians who can build a stronger relationship with U.S. groups: half of millennial and gen Z respondents said they were never asked to join a medical society. 

“I think we need to focus  more on younger positions, or younger members in general,” Konysz said. “I’ve been in the association space for the past 20 years or so, and I keep hearing about engaging younger individuals, and I was so surprised to hear that those individuals are not not being engaged as much as I thought they would be.” 

Though divisive policies in the United States have roiled the relationships between medical societies and the federal government, the report found that those concerns are much less pronounced internationally. Only 16 percent of European Union respondents, for instance, cited “political sensitivity” as a barrier to engagement with a U.S. medical society. (One outlier: Canada, where 66 percent of respondents cited it as a barrier.)

Konysz said the survey is an opportunity for future research on the importance of engagement with international members.

“We put so much emphasis on our U.S. stakeholders, and we know very little about our non-U.S. stakeholders—what they want, what they value, what their perceptions are like of U.S. organizations,” he said, “How can we engage them more effectively?”

A webinar to discuss the report’s findings will be held on Wednesday, April 22, at 3 p.m. EDT. Participants are asked to register.