[3][4] The goal of the organization was to enhance education, clinical care, and research in endocrine surgery and recruit membership from surgeons who had made significant contributions to the field.
[5] As an organization, the AAES has expanded its membership and programs to include postgraduate courses, research awards, quality and outcomes tracking, and comprehensive endocrine surgery fellowships.
[16] In community practices, recognition of endocrine surgery is growing and the AAES established the Community-Based Surgeons Committee in 2014 to represent this population of the membership.
[18] Recognizing the importance of advanced post-graduate training in endocrine surgery, prominent members created domestic fellowships, most notably, Norman Thompson at the University of Michigan in 1984.
[20][26][27] In recent years, endocrine surgery fellowship graduates have joined both academic and community practices equally, increasing patient-access to specialized care and signifying a growing recognition of the specialty.