Region II had its second combined regional meeting with Region III at the New York University School of Medicine on March 7, 2008. Approximately 80 APA members, non-members and trainees traveled to New York City. The Keynote address was delivered by Benard Dreyer who used political figures to illustrate important principles related to leadership. The morning workshop “Leadership Begins and Ends …with You” was led by Kenneth M Slaw, PhD. APA President, Peter Szilagyi joined us for the day and updated us on the APA strategic planning process as well as the resulting initiatives of the organization.

The afternoon program consisted of original research presentations. Both Region II and III members heeded our call for abstracts and, following a peer review process, 18 were chosen: 10 for poster presentations and 8 for platform presentations. This year’s best trainee presentation award winner was J. Nadine Gracia, MD, from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA for her original research, “Vacant Properties: A Modifiable Target for Intervention to Reduce Aggravated Assaults in Urban Cities?” Of note, almost all of the presentations were chosen to present their research either as a poster or platform presentation at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. Congratulations, everyone!

During our regional breakfast in Hawaii, we had a great discussion regarding our upcoming regional meeting. Many people expressed a preference for more interactive workshops. We came up with a list of many possible future topics for upcoming meetings: curricular development, environmental topics including global climate change, assessing information through the internet, mentoring and more leadership skills including strategic planning. Please contact either of us (Cindy is cjo1@nyu.edu and Suzy is (tomops01@nyumc.org) if you have other ideas or want to get involved.

Thanks to Judy Turow’s gracious offer, our upcoming combined Region II and III meeting will be at Jefferson in Philadelphia. More details, including the date, will be forthcoming! We hope to see you there. Finally, Suzy and Cindy would like to thank Judy Turow and Cindy DeLago, our outgoing regional chairs, for their hours of hard work and their incredible organizational skills while making it look so easy. We hope to measure up to their high standards!

Region II Co-Chairs:
Cindy Osman (cjo1@nyu.edu)
Suzy Tomopoulos (tomops01@nyumc.org)