Jayant K. Deshpande, MD
Jayant K. Deshpande, MD
In my final note as Editor of the Society Newsletter, I want to offer thanks to many colleagues and some thoughts for other members.
Over the past four years, I have had the pleasure of working with extremely dedicated and talented people. For the first two years, Gail Rasmussen served as assistant editor and did an excellent job of reviewing our Annual Meeting and the joint AAP/SPA winter meeting. Rita Agarwal subsequently took on that difficult task. In addition, she has served as Associate Editor actively contributing other articles and ideas for new directions for the Newsletter. Tom Mancuso also has been a regular and reliable contributor of thoughtful reviews of literature and has done the difficult task of Associate Editor overseeing the Point/Counterpoint section. The timely and interesting articles in this section all have been well appreciated by our members. Rita will become the Editor of the Newsletter and Tom has agreed to continue as Associate Editor, starting in 2001.
I also want to thank and acknowledge the members of the committee during the past four years (see page 10). Committee members regularly contribute literature reviews and ideas for the Newsletter. During the tenure of the present committees, the Newsletter has added articles of general interest (e.g., Letters from Africa), the Kids' Column, and news from the International Committee as regular features of the Newsletter. As electronic and web publishing have emerged, the Publications Committee worked closely with the Communications Committee headed by Joe Tobin to move toward the combined hard copy/web-based Newsletter. With this format, we have been able to bring members information of interest while keeping the costs of publications and distribution at a reasonable level. Moreover, the web-based format allows members access to a wide variety of information including the contents of the Newsletter from anywhere in the world and for longer periods of time. Finally, I want to thank Hallie Townsend, Heather Spiess and Stewart Hinckley from Ruggles, our management company. They are a hard working group who help make the process of putting the Newsletter together and getting it to you seem easy.
Rita and Tom, I wish you the best with the Newsletter during your stewardship.
Jayant K. Deshpande, MD, Editor
Vanderbilt
Children's Hospital, Nashville, TN
Jay.Deshpande@mcmail.vanderbilt.edu