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In this Issue:
- Governor's Message
- ADVOCACY
- LEADERSHIP DAY
- ANNUAL MEETING UPDATE
- INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL GRADUATES
- ACP MEETING WRAP-UP
- AWARDS
- I RAISE THE RATES
Ruth E. Weissberger, MD, FACP, ACP Governor
Governor's Message
Dear CT ACP Colleagues:
We've had a busy spring, with many legislative activities and most recently, the annual ACP Internal Medicine Meeting in Boston. As always, the meeting offered a wealth of scientific sessions along with resident and student abstract competitions, the Doctor's Dilemma final rounds, and many opportunities for connecting and networking. I had the honor of celebrating several new ACP Fellows from Connecticut at the convocation ceremony and facilitating the Governor-Elect session as well. The chapter also hosted a Connecticut ACP members reception along with our colleagues from New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania. It was a great event and nice to see colleagues participate from across Connecticut.
I also joined members of our Health and Public Policy Committee this week in Washington, DC to participate in ACP Leadership Day. This annual event is a great opportunity to meet with members of Connecticut's congressional delegation to advocate for legislation that will improve the health of our patients.
Planning for our in-person annual meeting on October 18th at the Aqua Turf in Southington is also underway. Our planning committee, led by Drs. Diana Sewell and Naseema Merchant has lined up a wonderful program, and we've shared some exciting updates below. We'll send out the registration link for abstracts sometime in June, and look forward to an excellent array of submissions again this year.
I hope you will review this edition of our newsletter and check out many of the ways CTACP is engaged, highlighting the contributions of our colleagues and serving as a voice for our profession.
I am continually proud of how involved many of you are in our organization, both locally and at the national level. All of these efforts are critical to advancing the goals of the profession and serving the needs of our patients. If you are not yet involved in CT ACP but would like to be, please don't hesitate to reach out to our Executive Directors, Lisa Winkler and Tricia Dinneen Priebe, at lisa@grassrootsct.com
Sincerely,
Ruth
ADVOCACY
The Chapter's Health and Public Policy Committee, under the leadership of Drs. Ben Cherry and Anthony Yoder, have had an active legislative session, testifying on several key bills and serving on the steering committee of the CT Coalition for Climate Action which has spearheaded passage of the Climate preservation Act (HB 5004) this session. In addition, they spoke at a press conference with the Connecticut General Assembly Public Health Committee Co-chairs, Sen. Saud Anwar and Rep. Cristin McCarthy-Vahey, on cybersecurity and legislation to protect patient health information shared with the Health Information Exchange (HIE) and the physicians, clinicians and facilities responsible for their patient's privacy and confidentiality. Articles on the press conference can be found here and here. CTACP is one of 29 organizations that participated in this advocacy. As a result of these efforts, the Public Health Committee included language in SB 1 addressing liability concerns and creating a working group with the Office of Health Strategy, the Public Health Committee, and representatives from physician and other clinician groups to address privacy, cybersecurity, contracting, and the policies and procedures that are developed for the HIE. The working group will share recommendations by January 1, 2025 for consideration in the next legislative session.
LEADERSHIP DAY
Dr. Ruth Weissberger was joined by Drs. Ben Cherry, Amir Mohammad and Olivia Brooks at ACP Leadership Day in Washington DC this year. The event kicked off on May 14th with educational briefings on key legislative topics before heading to the hill on May 15th to meet with members of Congress. Connecticut had a full schedule and met with staff in each office of our delegation. This year's priorities related to 3 bills currently in Congress: the Safe Step Act, to reform step therapy protocols; the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act, to increase GME funding to create 2000 new residency positions per year for the next 7 years; and the Physician Fee Schedule Update and Improvement Act, to fix the Medicare physician payment system.
ANNUAL MEETING UPDATE
The CT ACP Scientific Meeting 2024 will be held in person on Oct. 18th at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington. We are excited to announce that our keynote speaker this year will be Dr. Darilyn Moyer, CEO and Executive Vice President of the American College of Physicians, who will also participate in our Women in Medicine breakfast.
Additional sessions will include:
- Treating adults with developmental disabilities
- Visual art and the art of doctoring
- A lively MKSAP Session
- An engaging dermatology lecture with a focus on nails
- The latest in diabetes
- And much more.
As always, we'll need volunteers to serve as judges for the resident and medical student abstract competition. Please contact Dr. Jackie Savage at jacqueline.savage@yale.edu if you are interested in volunteering.
INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL GRADUATES
Our new IMG Council will co-host an informational session on advancement to ACP Fellowship on June 27th June, together with the DEI Committee and ECP Council. Click here to register. The Council is also in the process of scheduling a webinar on financial planning and investment. A sign up will be shared shortly.
ACP MEETING WRAP-UP
We've shared some pictures from the ACP meeting in Boston, below. Please join me in congratulating CTACP members who advanced to Fellowship at the meeting, including Dr. Varun Jain, Dr. Kanwar Aurora, Dr. Amir Mohammad, Dr. Jennifer Ozimek and Dr. David Ozimek.
I hope you will also join me in congratulating our Doctors' Dilemma Team from the UCONN Internal Medicine Residency. They played a great game and represented our state well in the competition. The team from UCONN included Fernando Onuchic, Siddarth Ramanan and Avtandil Kochiashvili.
CTACP received a grant award from national ACP for our member outreach efforts this year that helped fund attendance at the meeting by two CT ACP early career physicians. Dr. Eric Schwaber and Dr. Varun Jain received the grants in recognition of their efforts to support the Chapter.
AWARDS
I am delighted to announce the 2024 Internal Medicine Resident Award recipients. This $500 award honors medical students with outstanding academic achievement and community service who are going on to internal medicine residency in Connecticut. The 2023 awardees are:
- Marah Maayah, M.D.-Yale University School of Medicine
- Nour Aboumatar, M.D.-Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, Quinnipiac University
- Fabrizio Tropea, M.D.-University of Connecticut School of Medicine
I RAISE THE RATES
I Raise the Rates is a national ACP program to increase adult vaccination rates. As part of the program, ACP also provides educational information on vaccines and new resources from public health partners, educational opportunities, and a selection of media articles related to immunization. For more information, please check out the recent newsletter here.