IPA Bulletin
President's Message

by Helen Fung-Kum Chiu

It is indeed a great honor and privilege for me to take up the Presidency of IPA. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my predecessor, Joel Sadavoy, for his excellent leadership to steer our organization through a very difficult and trying period. Many of our members are aware that IPA was in rather critical financial difficulty throughout the past two years. It was under Joel’s leadership that now we have regained some financial stability.

We are very privileged to have very strong leadership and an outstanding Board of Directors. The new Executive Committee includes: Masatoshi Takeda, President-Elect (Japan); João Carlos Barbosa Machado, Secretary (Brazil); Jacobo Mintzer, Treasurer (United States); Jill Rasmussen, Treasurer-Elect (United Kingdom); and Joel Sadavoy, Immediate Past President (Canada). As described on page 4, we also welcome three new members to the Board: Susan Benbow (United Kingdom), Horácio Firmino (Portugal), and Kiyoshi Maeda (Japan). In addition, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of our Executive Director, Susan Oster, who joined IPA in 2005 and over the past two years has worked very hard for IPA and introduced many new and innovative ideas in the mode of operation of our organization.

Recently, the IPA Board of Directors completed a strategy planning discussion as part of its Board of Directors meeting in Osaka. A number of organizational priorities were identified. First and foremost, the Board has targeted membership development as a key area. In particular, we would like to become an even more multidisciplinary organization. Therefore, we are developing a mechanism where a small number of seats per Board election would be designated for a special category of discipline to encourage greater participation in Board leadership roles by all other members than medicine. More information will be provided about this in the article on page 5. The Board also determined that in order to develop our membership, IPA needs the tools. Therefore, we will be obtaining a new membership database, and developing and implementing a membership recruitment and retention plan, including a membership needs assessment and satisfaction survey. In addition, the Board is now in the process of restructuring the program for our Affiliate Associations so as to develop closer links with them and to make IPA more relevant to their organizations. At present, we have 19 Affiliate Associations from different countries, and we hope to involve them more in the activities of IPA so that we can work in partnership on various projects.

Our next priority area is our advocacy and public policy initiative. We have identified dementia care to be our focus over the coming two years. In this regard, we are in the process of creating a world scan of regional issues. To date, we have conducted focus groups on dementia care in Europe and Asia, and will conduct a focus group in Latin America in the next year. Another exciting development is we are exploring collaboration with Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) on a specific project to improve dementia care. We are pleased to have Board member, Anne Margriet Pot, spearheading this project.

Of course, our meetings continue to be important for IPA. In fact, the Board has recently agreed to change the name of regional meetings to international meetings as we would like to encourage delegates from different regions to attend. It is also my great pleasure to report that we had an extremely successful Silver Congress in Osaka. The scientific content was of a very high standard. With a registration of approximately 2,400, this was the largest meeting that IPA has ever held. In addition, the meeting has generated a financial surplus for our organization. I would like to pay tribute to Masatoshi Takeda and his team for organizing such an outstanding conference. This was truly a remarkable accomplishment. Credit must also be paid to Sandy Finkel, who put in a lot of effort to ensure the success of this meeting.

Other exciting developments include our meeting in Dublin in April 2008 which has been organized in association with the Faculty of Old Age Psychiatry of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. On behalf of IPA, our appreciation to the meeting chairs - Brian Lawlor and Greg Swanwick. In conjunction with this meeting, we are conducting two optional pre-meeting workshops: psychotherapy (our first one on this topic), and neuroimaging. The first neuroimaging in dementia workshop was held in November 2007 in Amsterdam and received very positive feedback from its participants. John O’Brien is organizing two more workshops in 2008: the first in Dublin and the second is later in the year in Florence, Italy. Also in 2008, plans are in process to conduct an expert meeting, “Socio-medical impact of the prevention of dementia.” Serge Gauthier will chair this program. Planning has already begun on our next congresses: September 2009 – Montréal, Canada, chaired by Serge Gauthier and Nathan Hermann; October 2011 – The Netherlands, chaired by Anne Margriet Pot and Frans Verhey.

I am also pleased to report that our journal, International Psychogeriatrics, under the capable leadership of David Ames, Editor and Assistant Editors, John O’Brien and Nicola Lautenschlager, is doing well and its impact factor in 2006 has risen to 1.745 from 1.215 in 2005. Another organizational highlight is the formation of a new task force on testamentary capacity and undue influence under the leadership of Sandy Finkel and Kenneth Shulman. Finally, I would like to congratulate Ajit Shah who was recently appointed deputy editor of this newsletter, the IPA Bulletin, and will join editor David Folks in leading this important publication.

These are really exciting times for IPA and I believe we are poised to achieve even greater success. There are many opportunities and challenges ahead of us. The Executive Committee and the Board will continue to work hard, but it is essential that we have the support of all the members of our organization so that we can achieve our mission. I look forward to your comments and suggestions, and to keeping in touch with all of you in the coming two years. Thank you for your support.

Reprinted from IPA Bulletin, Volume 25, Number 1