Thank you for the opportunity to respond to Dr. Carrey’s letter. We also appreciated meeting with him on-site at the meeting in Toronto to discuss his concerns.
The Joint Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) and the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (CACAP) took place October 18–23, 2005 in Toronto, Canada. With a total of 3,541 attendees, including 405 Canadians and 727 International attendees, this was the largest meeting ever for both organizations.
The incredible interest in the meeting was also represented by the increase in submissions. We received 749 submissions for the Joint Annual Meeting Call for Papers, representing over a 40% increase from 2004. The overall acceptance rate was 55% compared with 72% in 2004. The Program Committee (PC), including representatives from the CACAP, had the enormous task of selecting the final program.
To help readers better understand AACAP’s PC process, we will outline our procedures. The Call for Papers is distributed each October for the following year’s Annual Meeting. It is revised annually based on feedback from our members. For the February submission deadline, each proposal is reviewed by at least 5 committee members, including the PC Chair and Deputy Chair. Each submission is also discussed by the entire committee at the April meeting. Particular care is given to whether the submission fits the format requested. Although we try and adjust submissions to other formats if appropriate, choosing a less appropriate format hurts the submission. Each submission is placed in one of three categories: “accept”, “reject”, or “revise and resubmit (R & R).” Only presentations that would be appropriate to be resubmitted for the June New Research Poster deadline receive the “R & R” designation. Currently this is the only group that will receive feedback from the committee on ways to improve their submission. There is no “R & R” for worthy, but not selected submissions that would not be appropriate as a poster format.
After the selection process, the Chair and Deputy Chair “put the program together” by assigning the selected submissions to time slots. This provides an opportunity to look for both topic diversity and clinical versus basic research diversity. At this time some highly rated, but not previously accepted submissions may be added to the program.
The debate about balance in the program has been ongoing for as long as any of us can remember. For the Toronto meeting, a new submission format, “Clinical Perspectives” was instituted just for that reason and the number of Clinical Case Conferences and Clinical Consultation Breakfasts were increased over previous years. A major goal of the AACAP Program Committee (PC) has been to continue an open dialogue on the issue of balance. As a result, the new PC Chair (Harmon), Deputy Chair, (Leventhal) and Meetings Department Director (Fordi) have met with AACAP components (committees and work groups) and individuals over the last two years in an effort to get feedback about this issue and to guide submitters as to how their work best fits the different PC formats (clinical case conferences, clinical perspectives, institutes, posters, symposia, etc.). At the meeting in Toronto, we met with three components, and members of the PC committee met with several more as liaisons or ad hoc committee members. We also met with Dr. Carrey to discuss his concerns. We hope that discussion was useful for him.
With regard to Dr. Carrey’s submission, the difficulty with the submission was not the topic, e.g., “narrative therapy” but the request for a workshop. Workshops are presentations designed to “teach” clinicians a particular approach; as part of a “handson, focused learning experience.” The PC wants to be sure that the validity and utility of the approach that is taught has been well documented by some type of evidence which can range from peer-reviewed literature on the topic to well-controlled studies. The scientific evidence and the limitations of the technique or approach need to be presented. In the case of the “narrative therapy” submission, had the same topic been part of a clinical perspective or clinical case conference (or part of an Institute presentation), which does not set out to “teach” clinicians a particular approach, different criteria would have been used to make a decision about it. Given the existing time lines, unfortunately we did not have an option to suggest a resubmission in another format.
Each year the committee reviews all the evaluations from the previous year’s meeting including specific presentations as well as overall impressions. These evaluations will be available in December. Although anecdotal, specific positive feedback about a “balanced program” was provided to the PC leadership at the Component Chair’s Meeting, AACAP Council Meeting and the AACAP Business Meeting as well as by individuals throughout the meeting.
Sincerely,
Robert J Harmon, MD
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, University
of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver, AACAP Program Chair
Bennett Leventhal, MD
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Illinois
Chicago, Deputy AACAP Program Chair, AACAP Meetings Manager
Lily Hechtman, MD
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, McGill
University, Montreal, CACAP Program Chair
Heidi Fordi
Department Director, AACAP Meetings Department
Contributor Information
Robert J Harmon, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver, AACAP Program Chair.
Bennett Leventhal, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Illinois Chicago, Deputy AACAP Program Chair AACAP Meetings Manager.
Lily Hechtman, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, McGill University, Montreal, CACAP Program Chair.
Heidi Fordi, Department Director, AACAP Meetings Department.