First, members introduced themselves and their role in APPD. Highlights of the very successful Fall meeting at Temple University’s Children’s Hospital were provided by participants. One of the platform sessions resulted in a workshop here today and another as a poster.

The group consensus is that there was no significant impact of our regional re-definition. We did gain the INOVA Fairfax program. Barriers to activities are really limited to time and finding a location and source for our meeting in the Fall.

With respect to resource needs, we identified the need for potential APPD support for conference calls and perhaps some money to support the coordinator’s travel – however given the proximity of our region, this will likely not be too big of an issue. Travel grants or seed money for regional activities would be a plus. Preliminary discussions regarding approaching industry such as e-value or new innovations as a funding source occurred with no conclusion.

We spent the remainder of the breakfast discussing potential structure for the Fall meeting. Those in attendance thought the meeting should occur earlier in September this year. The forum should include presentations or discussions of topics of interest to the various constituencies in their own small groups (Directors, Coordinators, Chiefs and chiefs-to-be) as well as room to discuss or present works in progress and potential collaborative research/educational projects. The use of Survey Monkey as a way to generate topic items was suggested. We agreed that a formal agenda with flexibility was desirable.

For next Spring’s meeting, again, the use of a pre-meeting survey could be helpful to set agenda. There was some discussion that part of the breakfast should be academic and part to plan the fall meeting and conduct business. Pitches for regional collaboration are encouraged and the setting could potentially be used as a warm up for chief resident presentations of projects in conjunction with coordinators or program directors.

The region elected Cliff Yu, PD from National Capital Consortium and Kathy Miller, Coordinator/Educator from Johns Hopkins as our regional chairs. Congratulations! Paul Bellino, program director from Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, volunteered to host this year’s Regional Meeting tentatively the week of September 19th.