Trustee Report – March 2019

Greetings!

Whistler was a fantastic venue for the Winter Ski meeting! The weather was great, the skiing was outstanding, the CE was world class and the fellowship with other pediatric dentists was the exclamation point to a wonderful week. The Super Bowl party on Sunday was the start of a week of winter fun, learning and escape. Thanks to SWSPD President Ryan Roberts, the planning committee and our Executive Director Michelle Jacobi for all of their efforts making this meeting something very special!

The AAPD Winter Planning meeting was in Austin, Tx this year and the AAPD Board of Trustees had a great meeting. The meeting kicked off with a presentation from the Proctor and Gamble Company making a joint presentation with the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry Foundation. P&G is test marketing in Phoenix and Milwaukee a new patient education project that will directly benefit the Foundation as well as underserved children in these cities. The intent is to grow this project into a nationwide effort that will contribute substantially to the economic benefit of the Foundation as well as underserved children across the country.

You may have noticed in the previous paragraph that the Foundation name is different than what you may have remembered. For a number of years Healthy Smiles Healthy Children The Foundation of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry was the official name. The Foundation board has discussed for some time making the name more appropriate and maybe easier to remember and use so they asked the AAPD BOT to approve a name change. This was approved and the new name of HSHC is a return to the original name – American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry Foundation.

There were some Policy and Procedure items that were approved, mostly housekeeping issues but still important to share. The first was a name change for the Oral Pathology SIG, it will now be known as Oral Pathology/Oral Medicine. The second was a clarification of the trustee nomination process. The last was to implement a dues reduction plan for multi-year International Colleague membership in the Academy.

The U.S. Virgin Islands membership is now included in the Southeastern District. This was a request from the Southeast.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the AAPD have a joint sedation document and a jointly developed addendum to this document was approved by the board. This addition will be voted on by the General Assembly in Chicago. Please make certain to attend so you may vote. I am planning to review this at our caucus in Chicago.

There are two new member benefits that were approved, one a discount for AAPD members at Office Depot and the other a discount for membership in the Lifelock service. In both cases, the AAPD receives royalties which add to the non-dues revenue stream for the Academy.

Look for new CDT codes in 2020 that the board approved after work by the Committee on Dental Benefit Programs.

The board approved of three future joint meetings. The first, with the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, Scotland in September, 2020. Next up will be a fall 2022 meeting with the Royal College Surgeons Ireland and the last, a spring 2022 joint meeting with the American Association of Orthodontists.

Several appointments for AAPD members to serve as AAPD representatives on various commissions were made.

The board voted to move the 2022 annual meeting out of San Francisco. There will probably be some members unhappy with this decision, but the board was concerned about safety issues in San Francisco. To safeguard the welfare of members and their families, the board thought it would be more appropriate to move the 2022 meeting to San Diego.

The board voted to reduce the number of Comprehensive Review courses to one per year. This was done primarily due to the addition of a American Board Qualifying Exam review course that the AAPD conducts. The board feels that the course subject matter is very similar and there was duplication of material.

In the last newsletter I mentioned that Dr. Heber Simmons will be retiring in the not to distant future as the AAPD Congressional Liaison and the board approved additional funding for the two individuals that will assume the responsibilities to travel to Washington with Heber to ‘learn the ropes.’ Dr. Jade Miller from Nevada and Dr. Rob Delarosa from Louisiana will soon be accompanying Dr. Simmons on an alternating basis beginning this spring.

In May, the AAPD will meet in Chicago and I encourage you to register for this great meeting! The SWSPD Caucus will be on Saturday, May 25^th from 2:00pm until 3:00pm in the Lake Huron Room of the Hilton. Please mark your calendars and plan to attend. If you have any topics you would like to discuss at the caucus, please let me know.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, comments or concerns!

Respectfully submitted,

John T. Fales, Jr., D.D.S., M.S.

Trustee, Southwest Society of Pediatric Dentistry