May 2, 2016
Dear Friends
On behalf of the Indo-American Psychiatric Association (IAPA), I welcome you to the IAPA Annual meeting to be held on May 15th , 2016 at the Sheraton Hotel in Atlanta, GA.
The Atlanta chapter is hosting the IAPA annual meeting. The host team led by Harshad Patel, MD, Dilip Patel, MD, and Mike Shah, MD have done a fabulous job of organizing the event. The IAPA office bearers from the Executive Committee, Councilors, Chapter Presidents, and Board of Trustees has provided direction and support. We have our scientific program and poster session in the afternoon followed by the business meeting and dinner banquet in the evening. The theme of the scientific program is “Cultural Aspects of Mental Health Treatment”. Our “Young Turks” team of Rohit Chandra, MD, Neeral Sheth, MD and Tanuja Gandhi, MD have organized the scientific program and the concurrent poster sessions. We have 18 posters from residents and fellows indicating the growing interest among trainees to be involved with IAPA The banquet Dinner promises to be a food and fun event with catered delicious Indian food and songs and music program thereafter.
I would like to thank all the office bearers of our partner and allied organizations for communicating their best wishes for our meeting, and our sponsors for providing funding support.
Spring is a glorious time to be in Atlanta and I am sure all of you will enjoy your visit here. I look forward to a very productive meeting.
Sincerely
Aapatkar
Ashwin A Patkar, MD, DFAPA, DFASAM
President, IAPA
March / April 2016
Dear Friends:
It is my honor and pleasure to serve as the President of IAPA.
With your support and contribution, we have accomplished a lot during this period. I have highlighted a few: IAPA Chapters Growth & Integration: Six new chapters have developed in the last 2 years: Florida, Massachusetts, Northern Virginia, Nebraska/Iowa, Ohio, and Texas/San Antonio. In addition, the Connecticut chapter has been rejuvenated. My sincere thanks to all chapter Presidents for their dedication and commitment to IAPA.
They are: Dr. Padma Aking (Arizona), Dr. Khenu Singh (California), Dr. Sanjay Banerjee (Connecticut), Dr. Babu Rankupalli (Florida), Dr. Ajita Joglekar (Georgia), Dr. Edwin Simon (Illinois), Dr. Pramit Rastogi (Maryland), Dr. Rohit Chandra (Massachusetts), Dr. Subhash Bhatia (Nebraska/Iowa), Dr. Lily Arora (New Jersey), Dr. Devendra Amin (New York), Dr. A. Adityanjee (Cleveland/Ohio), Dr. Hari Vemulapalli (Pittsburgh/Pennsylvania), Dr. Saran Mudumbi (Tennessee), Dr. Malathi Koli (San Antonio/Texas), Dr. Chand Nair (Tristate), Dr. TG.Sriram (Richmond/Virginia) and Dr. CM Prasad (Northern Virginia).
My deepest gratitude to our councilors, Drs. Bhagirathy Sahasranaman and Bhargavi Devineni for doing a superb job of maintaining monthly dialogues between the chapter presidents.
MIT Growth: Young members have been joining our organization at a steady pace. IAPA is committed to their growth and this significant improvement in the rate of young membership is particularly heartening. I sincerely hope this continues. My sincere appreciation to all who are making this happen: Chapter presidents, MIT representatives (Drs. Manan Shah and Raman Baweja), and ECT representative (Dr. Durga Roy).
Advances in Technology: We now have an electronic newsletter! Thanks to the efforts of our young members: Dr. Rajiv Radhakrishnan and his team (Drs. Amit Chopra, Lily Arora and Shirshendu Sinha). The face book created recently by Dr. Manan Shah, continues to be increasingly popular.
Fund Raising & Finances: Our councilor, Dr. Ranga Ram has been leading the effort on raising funds and I am happy to say that his hard work has been bearing fruits. Dr. Manoj Shah (Chair of the Finance committee) and Dr. Dilip Patel have done a tremendous job to ensure that IAPA’s financial health continues to be positive.
Congratulations to the winners of the 2015 IAPA awards: Dr. Paramjit Toor Joshi(Outstanding Academician), Dr. George Mathews (Outstanding Service Award), Dr. Pratap Narayan (Outstanding Public Sector Award), Dr. Rajiv Radhakrishnan (Outstanding Resident), and Dr. Surinder Nand (IAPA President’s Award). Drs. Ankur Patel and Tanuja Gandhi are the winners of the 2015 Mentee-Mentor awards.
None of my work would have been possible without assistance from my team. My heartfelt gratitude to them. They include members of the Executive Committee (Drs. Dilip Patel, Meena Ramani and Ranga Ram), Extended Executive Committee (Drs. Bhagirathy Sahasranamn, Bhargavi Devineni, Durga Roy, Raman Baweja and Manan Shah), International Liaison (Dr. Rajiv Tandon), Editor (Dr. Amit Chopra) and Board of Trustees (Drs. Ramaswamy Viswanathan, Vani Rao, Rudra Prakash, Nalini Juthani, Manoj Shah, Asha Mishra, Surinder Nand and Ashok Van).
I am grateful for the opportunity to serve you.
Sincerely
Ashwin Patkar, MD
President, IAPA.
As always, do not hesitate to contact any of the IAPA office bearers with questions and/or comments.