It is the one year anniversary since the inaugural combined newsletter for all 3 major med-peds organizations to better inform the entire med-peds community of activities with “one voice”: the AAP-Section on Med-Peds (SOMP), National, Med-Peds Residents’ Association (NMPRA) and the Med-Peds Program Directors’ Association (MPPDA). The newsletter is coordinated by NMPRA, and the newsletter looks great! Please submit articles and ideas to us.

A note of thanks is in order to our past SOMP leaders, J. Tommy Cross, MD, MPH, FACP, FAAP (past chair), Michael Tracy, MD, FACP, FAAP (executive committee) and Anna-Binney McCague, MD (executive committee) for their tremendous devotion and advocacy to our specialty. They have agreed to remain very involved with SOMP as their expertise (just to name a few) in maintenance of certification, rural practice and resident and student issues remain key to our combined success. Katy Lerman is our wonderful AAP staff-wizard that keeps the section moving forward and she will continue to champion our future efforts with our new executive committee.

We look forward to continued work with Steven Scofield, MD, FACP, FAAP and Michael Donnelly, MD, FAAP as we welcome our new executive committee members; Kevin O'Callaghan, MD a resident at Tufts University/Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA, Samuel Borden, MD, FACP, FAAP also from Baystate Medical Center and Linda Thomas-Hemak, MD, FACP, FAAP from The Wright Center Medical Group and for Graduate Medical Education in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Our AAP Section on Med-Peds has interest groups that include the med-peds practice group and the residents /students/young physicians group. We will now have a 6 member hospitalist subgroup that will allow us to liaison with the Society of Hospitalist Medicine (over 200 med-peds members) and our section. Up to 1/3 of our graduates now pursue hospitalist careers. We will move toward a hospitalist position on our executive committee (our executive committee has dedicated positions for a program director, community physician, resident) after a bylaws change that the membership will need to approve.

Please drop us an email if you would like to join or propose an activity for the group.

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In New Orleans (October 2012), there were four successful events. The NMPRA meeting this year was held in 2 places: Tulane School of Medicine and Mother’s Restaurant and the turnout was amazing. The new med-peds t-shirts are a keeper!! The AAP section program featuring Drs. Queller, Gombosi and Toll on topics of concussions, sleep disorders, counseling techniques for the primary care office was truly head boggling!!! The poster competition from the AAP section highlighted why need to keep the residents part of the section. Winners this year were Melissa L. Morello, MD from University Hospitals Case Medical Center for her clinical case study on Revisiting the Red Herring: Hypertension In a Young Man with Chest Pain and Shortness of Breath and Aman Chauhan, MD from LSU Health Science Center for his clinical case presentation on Idiopathic Pulmonary Hemosiderosis In a Six Year Old. The PHD program (Pediatrician health day) also continues to be a great education venue, social focal point at the exhibit hall and a great mentoring spot.

We can celebrate how much closer our med-peds organizations have become (professionally and socially) and what our combined efforts have produced. Our executive committees meet each October to compare notes, combine agendas and action items wherever possible.

Your med-peds organization leaders are very interested in working together with you to develop a repository of real-world med-peds success examples that can be used with legislators, students, deans, hospital administrators. It will also be used as a PR campaign to the public to show what med-peds physicians do in practice. Share with us your med-peds success stories!

Together we will develop:

• Influence health policy
• Strategies to make maintenance of certification as easy as possible
• A workforce survey for AAP section Help directors and residents navigate the New Accreditation System and Milestones
• Materials for osteopathic medical students and allopathic students (that do not have med-peds programs locally) to better understand med-peds
• Updates for the speaker’s kit and other web based materials
• A repository of med-peds graduates’ research bibliography

Allen Friedland, MD Chairperson Section on Med-Peds