President’s Letter from Bill Steinbach – What’s Happening at IDWeek

Next week, by this time that the newsletter reaches your inbox, the sun will have just come up on day one of IDWeek 2024 in Los Angeles. If this will be your first IDWeek, you’re in for an unbelievable meeting filled with your colleagues across ID and some special PIDS events. If this will be your second or seventh or twentieth or somewhere in between, you’re in for an unbelievable meeting filled with your colleagues across ID and some special PIDS events.

If you haven’t given the full pediatric track and PIDS events schedule a thorough look yet, I recommend checking it out. Here are a few things that jumped out to me that I wanted to share with you:

Pediatric Fellows’ Day (Wednesday) – We dedicate the first morning of the first day to students, residents and fellows as they transition through fellowship to faculty positions. This session is always interesting and filled with the excitement of young doctors preparing to launch their careers.

Caroline B. Hall Lecture (Thursday) – Named for one of our Society founders, this lecture allows us to highlight innovative clinical and translational research. This year’s lecturer, Gail Demmler-Harrison, joins a prestigious group of past lecturers.

A Red Carpet Affair (Thursday) – The PIDS Foundation Annual Dinner accentuates the PIDS IDWeek schedule. This year is shaping up to be no different. We’ve retooled the program and made some sweet additions.

Stanley A. Plotkin Lecture in Vaccinology (Friday) – What could I add about how important Stanley is to our specialty and Society? Instead, I’ll just say this lecture is so important it was named for him, and we follow it with our membership meeting because we’re all already in the room. Speaking of…

PIDS Membership Meeting (Friday) – This year we’ll be turning our annual gathering of members into a ‘State of the Society.’ In addition to the usual updates on membership and financials, we also plan to use our time together to plot our path toward a greater Society in the future.

There are plenty more than I can take up space here mentioning. I do want to draw your attention (and hopefully attendance) to these sessions, which were compiled by our PIDS liaisons to IDWeek planning committee.

Wednesday: Mano-a-Mano

Thursday: AAP Redbook: Highlights for 2024-2027, Challenging Cases in Pediatrics, Stories from the Front Line of Adult & Pediatric Traumatic Injuries

Friday: Papers That Should Change Your Practice in Pediatric ID, Let’s Not Be Rash: Infectious rashes and their mimickers, Surgical Issues in Pediatric Infectious Diseases

Saturday: Learn From the Experienced: Coffee and Cases in Resurging Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, Revenge of the SYPH(ilis) and Other Pediatric Foes, (Steward)SHIPS Across the Water: Pediatric AMS in the U.S. and Europe, Advancing the Management of Pediatric Community-Acquired Pneumonia

A special note of thanks to our Programs & Meetings Committee, PIDS liaisons to IDWeek and our staff for all of the hard work they have dedicated to ensuring we have an IDWeek to remember – whether it’s our first, second, seventh, twentieth, or somewhere in between.

I look forward to seeing you in LA!