It's been a busy year preparing for our annual meeting in Puerto Rico. Registration is open and we look forward to seeing everyone there. We've had an excellent crop of submissions and the various subcommittees now have the unenviable task of deciding, which of them will be presented in Puerto Rico as we examine our theme of mass media in psychiatric education. We look forward to the keynote address from Steve Schlozman MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of The Zombie Diaries (an excellent example of our theme). An unexpected outcome of my role as AAP President this year is that I have become something of an expert on the Zika virus. As I'm sure many of you have heard, AADPRT has decided to pull its 2017 meeting from Puerto Rico as a result of concerns about Zika. We were not afforded such a lengthy window to make a decision, but despite the onerous financial consequences for the organization if we were to relocate, we surveyed our membership and were happy to find that for a clear majority of folks, the presence of Zika would not discourage them from travelling to Puerto Rico. Reasons cited included the idea that by September Zika would already be present in many areas of the continental US (a prediction supported by recent modelling from NASA) and that Zika can be avoided by use of common-sense mosquito precautions (I'm already stocking up on mosquito repellant). On another note, many of you may be familiar with the current desperate financial crisis faced by Puerto Rico, especially if you're a regular viewer of the John Oliver show Last Week Tonight. I remember how quickly psychiatric organizations returned their meetings to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in an attempt to boost the local economy. Given the situation in Puerto Rico currently, I hope our presence there in September can do something to ease some of their burden.
AAP Bulletin – Spring 2016, Page 7 of 7
