President’s Corner
Dear SPER members
First, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of our 30th Annual Meeting last June. As always, presenters, moderators, reviewers, and participants made the meeting a lively forum of discussion and intellectual exchange. Many people worked behind the scenes to make this all work like a well-oiled machine: the members of the SPER Executive Committee- in particular, Carey Drews-Botsch, our outgoing president and the driving force behind the past meeting, Sue Bevan, and the many reviewers who helped with evaluating the entries for our awards. SPER is fortunate to have such dedicated members, and I am particularly grateful to our outgoing officers: Suzan Carmichael (past president), Danelle Lobdell (treasurer), Sarah Tinker (member-at-large) Jennifer Zeitlin (international member-at-large), and Sarah Pugh (Student Representative).
A special thank you goes to those of you who answered our annual SPER survey. Your comments are invaluable in helping the Executive Committee steer the Society in the right direction. We will continue to build on our strengths while addressing the areas that need improvement. I have read all your responses carefully, and we have started to work on implementing some of your suggestions. Among others, we are going to assess the members’ interest in a “distance mentoring” program, in which a trainee or early investigator would be paired with a more senior colleague as a go-to person for career or scientific advice. We are working on improving the SPER website and on making online access to Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology easy. We will do our best to ensure more diversity of topics, institutions, and countries at future SPER meetings. While we are working on these and other ideas, we are eager for suggestions for how we can continue to grow and improve SPER. If you would like to contribute, please write to me at olga.basso@mcgill.ca and write “Suggestion, SPER” in the subject, so I will know to give these messages my immediate attention. I am looking forward to hearing from you.