IPA Bulletin
President's Message

By Joel Sadavoy

IPA is now well into its 25th anniversary year and our first quarter has been a very active time for IPA leadership. In the past three to four months we met with potential partners and collaborators in London, New Orleans, Montréal and New York. Our purpose was to define mutual goals and establish formal working partnerships. In these meetings we discussed key elements of IPA’s mission particularly emphasizing IPA’s public policy and advocacy strategy for promoting mental health of the elderly with a special focus on dementia. We also had a successful meeting with Alzheimer’s Disease International to create ways in which the two organizations can collaborate. As these initiatives take form I will report the details to you in future Bulletins.

By the time you read this column, IPA will have concluded the Istanbul regional meeting. This will have been the second regional IPA meeting to be held in Turkey, both organized by Professor Engin Eker, former IPA board member. The meeting’s theme Multidisciplinary Approaches to Psychogeriatric Care is central to IPA’s organizational mission and goals which emphasizes cross fertilization between different disciplines and cultures. I want to express our appreciation to Professor Eker and his hardworking committees for their generosity in working so effectively on behalf of IPA. A companion program of the regional meeting was a satellite symposium convened in Haifa Israel chaired by Haifa University’s Professor Perla Werner entitled Mental Health and Ethnicity in the Elderly. This meeting was co-sponsored by IPA and the Jewish-Arab Center of the University of Haifa. Regional IPA events of this type strongly support our colleagues in developing unique regional psychogeriatric educational and service infrastructure and standards. Despite the challenges of organizing regional conferences I believe these meetings remain an essential IPA tool for enhancing international psychogeriatrics.

In an earlier issue of the Bulletin, I reported on the successful initial meeting of an African Psychogeriatric interest group in Addis Ababa. As a direct outcome of that meeting a geriatric psychiatry academic symposium, the first of its kind in Africa, was convened at the regional meeting of the World Psychiatric Association in Nairobi Kenya. At the same time an executive committee was formed to guide the further development of the newly proclaimed “African Psychogeriatric Association”. The first executive committee will be chaired by IPA board member Olusegun Baiyewu (Nigeria), together with Professor Devid Ndeti, Vice Chairman (Kenya), Dr. Teshome Shibre, Secretary (Ethiopia), Professor Tarik Okasha (Egypt) and Dr. Dan Mkize (South Africa). We warmly congratulate this group on their successful launch and IPA will do everything it can to support and foster further development.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the newly-elected slate of officers who will take office after the Osaka Congress. This outstanding group of leaders is composed of Professor Masatoshi Takeda (currently IPA Secretary and Chair of the Osaka Congress and newly-elected President-elect), Dr. João Carlos Barbosa Machado (currently Chair of IPA Meetings Committee and newly-elected Secretary) and Dr. Jill Rasmussen (current Chair of the Corporate Strategy Committee and newly-elected Treasurer-elect). This group will join Helen Fungkum Chiu as President and Jacobo Mintzer, Treasurer, and me (as Immediate Past President) to lead IPA in 2007-2009. With this strong, talented and committed leadership, IPA’s future is ensured. I look forward to welcoming you to the Osaka Silver Congress. I hope you have made your travel plans. See you in Japan.

Reprinted from IPA Bulletin, Volume 24, Number 2