2003 Preventive Medicine Annual Meeting

From: Bill Glitz and Jim Augustine; Media Relations; American College of Preventive Medicine

Subject: 2003 Preventive Medicine Annual Meeting

Through this memo and the accompanying advance program schedule, the American College of Preventive Medicine invites you to cover its upcoming Annual Meeting--Preventive Medicine 2003. Scheduled for February 19-23 in San Diego, this annual forum is the most important professional meeting in the United States that addresses issues related to disease prevention and health promotion. The meeting is organized and coordinated by the Washington, D.C.-based American College of Preventive Medicine, the national professional society for physicians involved primarily in disease prevention and health promotion.

Approximately 1,000 registrants are expected at the meeting. They will include physicians, other healthcare providers, public health policymakers, and additional biomedical professionals involved in health promotion, disease prevention, and preventive medicine.

During the meeting, advances in preventive medicine will be highlighted through the presentation of new research findings and state-of-the-art plenary sessions focusing on current health care policy trends, practice issues, emerging organizational and management models, and health promotion programs. The subject matter for Preventive Medicine 2003 falls into five major areas: public health practice; clinical preventive medicine; informatics; prevention policy issues; and career development. The research findings that will be presented and the plenary session presentations should be the genesis of numerous news and feature stories.

A staffed, full service press room will be available to journalists covering the meeting. The press room will be open from the morning of Wednesday, February 19 through midday on Sunday, February 23. Interview availabilities with key speakers will be scheduled in the press room throughout the meeting. Plans also are in place to help off-site journalists cover this important meeting through telephone interviews, the faxing of information from the meeting site, and the express shipping of materials on request.

Some of the high profile presenters scheduled to speak during the meeting include John Seffrin, Ph.D., CEO of the American Cancer Society, who will make the Keynote Address at 5:30 p.m. on February 19; well known anti-tobacco advocate Stan Glantz, M. D., Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who will address the meeting during a February 20 morning session on the "Epidemiology and Politics of International Tobacco Control"; George Lundberg, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the Internet health site Medscape, who will speak on the "Future Roles of Preventive Medicine Specialists in Quality Improvement and E-Health" during a February 21 morning plenary session; Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, M.D., Chief of the Division of Epidemiology in Family and Preventive Medicine Department at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, who will participate in two meeting sessions that will address women's health issues, including the recently halted hormone replacement therapy clinical trial that was part of the Women's Health Initiative; and internationally renowned physical activity researcher Steve Blair, Ph.D., of the Cooper Institute in Dallas and senior author of the Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity, who will take part in a discussion on the proper "dose" of physical activity.

Other topics that will be explored during the meeting include the public health aspects of emergency preparedness, smallpox response planning, new research and new guidelines on sexually transmitted diseases, new prevention strategies for STDs among adolescents, a bi-national perspective on border health issues, a detailed examination of the California initiative to improve school nutrition, an update on efforts to prevent and control cardiovascular disease, an update on cancer control and prevention issues, the use of family history as a genomics tool in healthcare, and a discussion on how to make Medicare more prevention oriented.

An annual feature at Preventive Medicine Annual Meetings is an update on preventive health recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the CDC-sponsored Task Force on Community Preventive Services.

Additional details about the meeting can be found on the Internet at www.preventivemedicine2003.org. We encourage you to check back at this site periodically for program schedule updates.

More detailed information on Preventive Medicine 2003 plenary sessions, newsworthy research findings to be presented, and press room activities will be available in mid-January. Feel free to contact us if you want to make sure you receive these materials or you want to begin making coverage plans. Bill Glitz can be reached by phone at (703) 532-3797, by fax at (703) 532-0835, and by E-mail at [email protected]., while Jim Augustine can be reached by phone at (703) 644-6824; by fax at (703) 644-0281, and by E-mail at [email protected].

Right now, the American College of Preventive Medicine recommends that you mark your calendars for February 19-23 as the dates for the most important annual forum regarding disease prevention and health promotion. The College advises out-of-town journalists that hotel space near the meeting site will be in short supply during the meeting and that hotel reservations at the Paradise Point Resort on Mission Bay (the site of Preventive Medicine 2003) or a nearby facility should be made as soon as possible.

We look forward to helping you cover Preventive Medicine 2003.