President’s Message – April 2023

Hi SWSPD friends! Hope this newsletter finds you well. My name is Ben Curtis and I have the great pleasure of serving this year as SWSPD’s President. I am in private practice in East Texas in the small town of Canton where I own practice, Curtis Kids Dentistry. My family has been active members in this community for over 125 years and it is a wonderful place to call home!

I want to thank all of our members that came out to our annual Ski Meeting in February in beautiful Telluride, Colorado. The snow was great! The CE was great! The friends were even better! I had a great time reconnecting with old friends and making some new ones too! We hope to see you in Big Sky for next years Ski Meeting, registration is already open on swspd.org!!!

A soon-approaching CE opportunity is an online webinar in April on Emotional Intelligence with a second webinar to follow in May on Happiness and Mental Wellness. You can register for both on swspd.org!

At the AAPD Annual Session this year, the SWSPD is going to have a booth on the main sales floor that we will share with a couple other regional district societies. Please come by booths 620-621 and say hi. We will have our SWSPD Caucus at 1:00pm on Saturday, May 27. Also, the AAPD Business Meeting is on Sunday morning, May 25 where there will be a vote on changes to the bylaws.

I am super excited about this summer and our Summer Meeting in Lake Tahoe in July!!!! We are going to have David Rothman speaking on Sedation for 6 hours of CE and Jed Best will do another 2 hours of CE on glass ionomers. This is definitely going to be a family fun event and we are working to organize a group rafting trip! We are going to bring my son Dodson with us and are looking forward to making some great memories.

We are also going to have a Joint Meeting with the SSPD in New Orleans in October. Good CE, Good Food, Good Music, and our Good Friends from our neighboring district. Jeannette MacLean will present “What’s New in Molar Incisor Hypomineralization Management” and Brittny Sciarra Murphy, RDH, will present “Myofunctional Therapy: A Piece of the Pediatric Airway Puzzle.” Register now at swspd.org to join us for eight hours of CE in the Big Easy plus a Hurricane Party on Thursday evening!

We have an exciting year ahead with lots of fun CE opportunities for our members. Hope to see you these!

Ben Curtis DDS
SWSPD, President