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This conversation includes the first half of Jörn Schattenberg's and Roger Green's interview with Donna Cryer. While the question is about Stephen's most outstanding contribution to MASLD, the focus is more on his remarkable ability to trigger increased awareness of MASH in many different ways.

Roger starts the conversation by asking Jörn and Donna to describe one outstanding contribution (okay, maybe two) that Stephen made to the field of MASLD. Jörn talks about Stephen's role as integrator, talking to all different kinds of players, designing trials, focusing on issues and needs of patients, regulators, investors. To Jörn, Stephen was "a lens focusing that something that was needed to spark the fire..." Picking up on this insight, Roger asks specifically about Stephen's role in the founding of NAIL-NIT (along with Mazen Noureddin). Jörn harkens back to Stephen's earlier work on the LITMUS Cohort Study and contributions to the field to describe the process that led him and Mazen to start NAIL-NIT, and notes the consortium's tremendous success to date.

Continuing this theme, Donna describes Stephen's ability to bring people together and his providing "unique space for having smaller, intimate conversations: when necessary. She cites NASH-TAG, another event he co-founded, as a meeting designed specifically for this purpose and a remarkably fertile place for making progress on big issues.  

Roger recalls Stephen bringing Donna to the early podcast to describe International NASH Day 2021, and goes on to comment that Stephen was the rare individual who embodied Malcolm Gladwell's three legs of the Social Virus stool: scientist, innovator and salesman. Although he doesn't say so in the interview, the implication is that Stephen's ability to play all these roles at once has sped the social awareness of MASLD and MASH and the efforts to advance solutions.

Finally, Roger recalls Stephen becoming "ticked" during an early SurfingMASH episode on the FDA's first Complete Response Letter for obeticholic acid as proof of his passion for the work.