ASPO President's letter May 2010 

Peter J. Koltai MD, FACS, FAAP

Dear Colleagues

Being elected President of ASPO is the greatest honor of my professional life; I am both humbled and excited to lead our organization for the coming year. We spend such a large part of our time caring for children, teaching and researching, living hard but worthy narratives with our identities enmeshed in the world of our craft. To have the recognition of my peers for this work is deeply satisfying. 

We have just had a wonderful meeting in Las Vegas; our members braved the smoke, slot machines and crowds, and showed up in record numbers. We had 430 registered attendees, the most of any COSM society this year.  Richard Rosenfeld MD is our new President - Elect, Marcy Lesperance MD  is our new Secretary and Anna Messner MD is the new Director at Large.  Paulo Campisi MD and his Program Committee put together a strong and informative program with an eclectic mixture of surgical techniques, evidence based outcome studies, translational research and basic science. For our Karl Storz Memorial Lecture, Mark Roberts, PhD provided a wonderfully cogent analysis of President Obama's new health care bill so that even I could understand it. As the Presidential Keynote Speaker, Robert Miller MD, Executive Director of the American Board of Otolaryngology described the architecture of the Board and its involvement in the new “Maintenance of Certification” process. He commented on the implication of this on sub-certification for Pediatric Otolaryngology. In the tradition of great scientists who have preceded him, Douglas Lowy, MD of the National Institute of Health, gave the Bluestone Lecture, describing his work developing the new multivalent HPV vaccine. We also had several excellent panels, perhaps most instructive was led by Christopher Hartnick MD on the management of subglottic hemangiomas in the age of propranolol.  The sub-certification panel led by Richard Rosenfeld MD was an in-depth discussion of the right path to achieving the formal integration of Pediatric Otolaryngology into the fabric of American Medicine. 

I am looking forward to the responsibility of organizing the next meeting in Chicago (April 29 - May 1, 2011) with our new Program Chair, Diego Preciado MD, PhD. All of our past Presidents and their Program Committees have understood ASPO's role in guiding our younger colleagues with a strong scientific program as well as the necessity of balancing the science with a stout serving of clinical information pertinent to the practitioner.  The key challenge is emphasizing the basic science that translates well to clinical practice; basic science that every clinician should know. Ultimately the program is like an equation that has lots of variables and many solutions; our job for this coming year is to pick an aesthetic and appealing answer to that equation. Some of the responsibility is in the hands of those who submit abstracts; content can only be as good as what we receive for review. I would welcome any suggestions and comments from our membership about topics and formats that should be weighted. I would also like to hear about exciting speakers with interesting topics you have recently heard who would be well received by our colleagues at our annual meeting next year in Chicago. (koltai@stanford.edu)

Having just attended our most recent Board meeting, I can tell you that I am inheriting a smooth running machine from President Sukgi Choi MD. We had 31 new members inducted into the Society. There is a solid endowment in place which has rebounded well from the economic downturn. The fellowships are fully filled, many more ACGME accredited. We provide generous research support. Our members are well represented in the leadership of Otolaryngology including in the AAO-HNS, AAP, ABEA, ACS, and TRIO. This is a strong time for our subspecialty. 

The ASPO committee appointments for 2010 - 2011 are now complete. These are based on requests for committee assignments by members over the past year; everyone who showed interest has been given an appointment. There will be two new Ad Hoc committees: “International Outreach Committee”, led by Anna Messner MD, will focus on coordinating pediatric otolaryngology opportunities for teaching and service in developing countries and possibly setting up an ASPO international visiting scholar program. “Come Home to ASPO Committee”, led by Jim Thomsen MD, will focus on developing strategies for bringing private practice pediatric otolaryngologists who have left or never joined ASPO, into our community. This group represents the largest potential pool of untapped members for ASPO and I strongly believe a concerted effort should be made to recruit them. 

If you wish to become active in the work of ASPO, please contact Richard Rosenfeld MD. As our President - Elect, he will be filling the committee positions for next year.

Paulo Campisi MD, having completed a splendid turn as Program Chair, will be the new Newsletter Editor. I think this position should eventually be formalized in our By-laws as a 4 year position. 

I have spent the last several months thinking about my upcoming ASPO Presidency. Given personal background, my instinct is to focus on the international diaspora of our unique knowledge. Our specialty has thrived in some places and not really progressed in others. The truth is we are experts in providing very expensive care. It is not certain that Pediatric Otolaryngology will be part of the evolving health care model in the rapidly developing nations of the world.  In these countries, the emergence of children's hospitals as centers of complex care provide fertile ground to nurture the skills of our craft in great numbers, however with major overlaps with other subspecialties.  As a consequence of the unprecedented scale of populations of China and India, we will have new insights and undoubtedly innovative new treatments about the disease we are interested in. We should make every effort to participate in this future and reach out to our colleagues with whom we share common problems and common expertise. This can be done in many ways: sharing our skill and knowledge in congenial conferences, teaching the teachers to promote the spread of our knowledge, directly caring for the dispossessed in foreign lands. My goal for the year is to deepen our understanding of the models of pediatric health care in the countries where our footprint remains modest.  I would like ASPO to develop a program of providing assistance to young clinician educators from the developing world to come to the United States to learn about Pediatric Otolaryngology here. Finally, I think it is important to update our ASPO members about the various programs for international humanitarian outreach and the opportunities of participating in these efforts. 

During the years I served as ASPO Secretary, I had a chance to work with four different Presidents. What I learned was that leadership matters and perhaps more importantly, that a cohesive committed team can leverage strong leadership into effective long term action toward shared goals. I am looking forward to an exciting, energetic year. Please let me hear from you in how ASPO can best serve you.