President's Message

By Anjana Kundu, MBBS, MD
Dayton Children's Hospital
Dayton, OH

Greetings all!

As we get ready to bid farewell to spring and welcome summer, we have several things to rejoice! The incredible success of our 5th Annual SPPM Meeting in Phoenix certainly tops the list.  With Dr. Rita Agarwal’s leadership as the Education Committee Chair, Drs. Scott Dingeman and Vidya Chidambaran, the Program Chair and Co-Chair respectively, put together a phenomenally informative and engaging program, which included prominent national and international leaders in pediatric pain medicine.  The high quality clinical and basic research abstracts presented at our annual meeting certainly posed a challenge to pick only a few of them as the winners, while the attendance at the workshops and PBLD’s touted the superior and engaging quality of these programs. Ultimately, it’s the support, engagement and enthusiasm of the membership that makes these events and the Society a success.

In case you couldn’t make it to the meeting or want to relive the experience of quality knowledge shared, Dr. Yuan-Chi Lin and the editorial team have compiled some of the highlights from the scientific program and the winning poster presentations, amongst other fantastic articles.

Besides bringing you the educational content regularly via the newsletter, we are also dedicated to sharing the latest news, articles, reviews, updates etc. via social media (Facebook and Twitter) and our website. I encourage you to engage and check them out regularly. Dr. Deepa Kattail led the efforts to update and revamp the Society’s website which is replete with great resources, and is easy to navigate. In May, Dr. Kattail also led and successfully conducted our first virtual journal club via Twitter that had 17 participants from several countries and included the author of the paper that was discussed. The journal club had over 87K impressions and more than 175 tweets, making it quite an amazing first endeavor. I urge everyone to participate in these events as often as possible, as these are location-independent avenues for learning as well as for networking. 

Along the themes of technology and education, the “Case of the Month” has been received by the membership with great enthusiasm. I encourage members to not only review these regularly, but to become a contributor. We can share our challenging cases and learning opportunities with each other, allowing continued high quality educational opportunities. We also created a pilot for short videocasts featuring some of the presenters at the 5th Annual Meeting discussing the summary of their presentations and relevant and practical implications of their data.  These are posted on our social media sites and will also be featured on the Society’s website. 

The quality of our educational efforts and collegial support is possible due to the engagement and commitment of our members.  It is this commitment that allowed us to establish the SPPM Research and Education Fund, with the purpose of supporting the activities that enhance and advance the educational and research endeavors of the Society, and projects perceived to be critical to the mission of the Society and benefit of its members.  I invite you to make a pledge for ANY amount, large or small, which will support this worthy cause critical to the future of our children affected by pain.

Your enthusiasm and continued involvement in advancing the mission of SPPM are crucial to the future of our Society.

I wish you all a wonderful summer!