Presidential Address: Looking Back in Order to Look Ahead

I would like to personally welcome all of you to the opening session of the 43rd annual meeting of the American Burn Association (ABA). This has been an exciting year of challenges, opportunities, and advancements. During the past year we have • rewritten our Association’s by-laws, • established the opportunity for long-term funding of our Department of Defense/ABA research by adding a line item to the Defense Appropriations budget for burn research, • reached out to the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma (COT) with the establishment within the COT of a burn section, • reopened meaningful discussions with Homeland Security on the needs of burn disaster planning and our joint concerns for true disaster planning, and • expanded outreach partnerships through the International Relations Committee with a first effort of working with Operation Smile to add burn resources and Advanced Burn Life Support courses to their overseas trips. Last fall I had the opportunity to visit the five regional burn meetings—the Eastern Great Lakes Regional Burn Meeting in Cincinnati, the Western Regional Burn Meeting in San Francisco, the Midwest Regional Burn Meeting in Madison, the Northeast Regional Meeting in Providence, and the Southern Regional Burn Conference in Memphis. Each has its own unique flavor and approach to providing an opportunity for scientific discussion and collegial networking. All allowed time for intellectual and social interaction which only a small meeting can accomplish. Most of these meetings lasted a day and a half to two days, and many were within driving distance of the represented burn centers. Eight hundred sixty-one individuals attended these sessions (Figure 1). Forty-two percent were nurses, 19% were physicians, and 39% were other members of the burn team (Figure 2). For many people, this was their first opportunity to present before an audience outside their own institution. For others, it was their first time to attend a burn meeting. For some, it was an opportunity to present a paper in anticipation of having it accepted at the annual meeting of the ABA. I’m sure that the input of the attendees at the regional meetings was quite valuable to the authors. All sessions allowed ample opportunity for discussion of the papers presented. The regional meetings held closer to home and for a shorter period of time than the annual meeting of the ABA allow for more members of the burn teams to attend a burn-specific continuing education conference and time to network with other burn centers. These regional meetings have taken on more importance during these hard financial times and have the full support of the Board of Trustees and the Central Office. Although they will never replace the annual meeting of the ABA for breadth and depth of offerings, in these days of tight budget restraints, regional meetings offer an opportunity to many who cannot or would not be able to afford 4 or 5 days off work with the accompanying travel and lodging expenses. I would strongly encourage those of you who do not live in areas serviced by these five regional meetings to consider either joining one of them or starting your own. The ABA staff and Board of Trustees support these regional meetings and stand ready to help in any way possible in expanding this educational opportunity to more of our membership. One of the themes I have touched on at the regional meetings is the obligation of membership. A first step is the recognition of those new members and first-time attendees of this ABA annual meeting. For this opening session, the first several rows of the auditorium are reserved for members of the Board of From the Department of Surgery, Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus. Presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Burn Association, Chicago, Illinois, March 30, 2011. Address correspondence to Sidney F. Miller, MD, FACS, Burn Center Director, Ohio State University Medical Center, Department of Surgery, 410 W 10th Ave., Columbus, OH 43210-1228. Copyright © 2012 by the American Burn Association. 1559-047X/2012