IPA Bulletin
President's Message

By Joel Sadavoy

Fall in the north and spring in the south. It is an exciting time for IPA as we gear up for an outstanding array of educational initiatives in the coming year. The biennial congress is IPA’s flagship event and next year’s Osaka Silver Congress will be of particular note as it will mark the celebration of IPA’s 25th anniversary. The meeting is entitled Active Aging: Wisdom for Body, Mind, and Spirit and its structure and content truly reflects the maturing of our field and the evolution of IPA. The Organizing Committee under the direction of Professor Masa Takeda and the Scientific Steering Committee chaired by Professor Heii Arai of Japan have worked hard to prepare a program that reflects the richness and complexity of Psychogeriatrics and the multidisciplinary approach that is so necessary to diagnose and treat our patients. The Scientific Steering Committee itself is made up of a diverse array of disciplines and expertise and it has been diligently gathering by conference call every month to debate the content of the meeting and key presenters. The outcome is an outstanding program, stimulating, controversial and novel. The plenaries range from the molecular level of genomics, pharmacogenomics and mechanisms of neurodegeneration to the clinicallevel of sleep disorders, aging and development, personality disorders, ethnocultural community psychogeriatrics and the newest information in anxiety, depression and dementia. The symposia will cover diverse topics such as ethics, nutrition, protein misfolding and neurodegeneration, neuroimaging, active aging, psychotherapy, late stage dementia management, suicide, training and curriculum development, and the latest on MCI. The facilities in the Osaka International Conference Centre (also called the “Cube”) are state-of-the-art; and speaking of art, you will be dazzled by the reception we will be holding during the Congress in the avant garde setting of the National Museum of Art in Osaka. We are only a year away from the Congress. It’s not too soon to begin making your plans to attend with 2,000 of your colleagues whom we expect to come.

A second major educational initiative, which took place on 31 October–1 November, was the IPA consensus conference, “Defining and Measuring Treatment Benefits in Dementia.” Designing clinical trials of dementia therapies and measuring meaningful outcomes have been a challenge and frequent source of dissatisfaction for researchers, regulators, and practitioners alike. IPA regularly convenes small invitational consensus meetings of this type to address crucial new areas of our field by bringing together the leading experts to discuss the evidence and develop an expert consensus to help guide the field of Psychogeriatrics. Prior topics of such conferences include BPSD, MCI, Agitation, Vascular Burden, Lewy Bodies, and Schizophrenia. Each has led to publications which have influenced clinical practice and policy decisions. Thank you to the sponsoring organizations: Eisai, Forest, Lundbeck, Merck, Merz, Myriad, Novartis, Pfizer, Shire, and Wyeth.

Regional meetings have also been a cornerstone of IPA’s strategy to help support the development of Psychogeriatrics in all areas of the world. It has been a highly successful approach leading to strong new initiatives in various regions including Turkey, Korea, Chile, and Brazil to name only a few. We are now working actively on the scientific program for our upcoming meeting in Istanbul 3–6 May 2007 chaired by former IPA Board of Directors member, Professor Engin Eker. Those who have attended a prior IPA event or other Psychogeriatric conference in Istanbul will expect nothing less than an outstanding academic and social event from Engin and his committee.

Recently, together with our first corporate partner, Myriad Pharmaceuticals, IPA convened a series of small focus groups in Paris to examine the patterns of dementia care and access to services and medications in five European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and UK. The data from this venture, once analyzed will be an added resource for those concerned with Psychogeriatric service and treatment delivery in Europe and help to guide future similar explorations in other regions of the world. A note of appreciation to Jacobo Mintzer for his leadership of this initiative with the able assistance of Raimundo Mateos, Jill Rasmussen, and Phillipe Robert, and most importantly, our thanks to those members from the five countries who came to Paris and participated in the discussions. It was a great team effort. We will describe this effort and our findings in the next issue of the IPA Bulletin.

The engine that drives all of these activities and the many more that make up the IPA agenda for action is the energy and dedication of the leaders of IPA and its committed members. Countless donated hours have been spent by the volunteers of IPA creatively brainstorming, planning, and operationalizing our initiatives. The amount of activity, most of it conducted by international conference calls, has been unprecedented in the history of IPA and has lead to important new developments such as corporate partners, the Learning Portal, live simultaneous electronic conferences, membership development, and multidisciplinary shared interest groups, among others. In the ensuing months, our goal is to create opportunities for all members to become actively engaged in this wonderful organization where you can exercise your creativity and leadership in putting our vision and goals into operation.


Reprinted from IPA Bulletin, Volume 23, Number 4