WFPI Executive Committee Meeting, 7th May 2020 (online)
Present: Dorothy Bulas/DB (President), Joanna Kasznia-Brown/JKB Vice President), Omolola Atalabi/OA (Past President), Cristian Garcia (Secretary), Tim Cain/TC, (Representative Director), (Hansel Otero/HO(Outreach Lead), Kushaljit Singh Sodhi/KSS (TB Lead), Sanjay Prabhu/SP (Digital Education Lead), Michael Gee/MG (MRI Protocol Lead, Ines Boechat/IB (Founding President and Co-opted Director), Kimberly Applegate /KA (IG Representative), Jennifer Boylan/JB (SPR Staff Liaison), and Kim Pede /KP (Admin).
Absent: Richard Barth/RB (Treasurer), Rick van Rijn/RVR, (Vice Secretary), Jaishree Naidoo/JN, (Representative Director), Tatiana Fazecas/TF (Vice Treasurer), Martin Stenzel/MS (Representative Director),Gladys Mwango (Representative Director), James Donaldson/JD (Representative Director), Rutger Jan Nievelstein/RJN (Representative Director), Ricardo Faingold/RF (Incoming Outreach Vice Chair), Ram Senasi/RS (Outreach Vice Chair), and Amanda Dehaye (Past Executive Director, Co-opted Director)
Blue comments = action
1. Approval of minutes from December meeting
DB: February minutes were approved.
2. President's Report
DB: Provided an update on the following.
• IPR 2021 plans - working with ESPR and SPR to ensure that we can celebrate at the IPR - attached a preliminary session.
- o The IPR provided us with time for a several sessions. Some will be on Monday and Tuesday. These will be pre-meeting courses. There will be separate registration for WFPI. They will also be providing us with a 60-minute session during “prime time” just before the opening ceremony.
- o Many of our leaders will be featured as speakers throughout the meeting.
- ▪ There will be an MRI session chaired by Michael Gee and Wendy Lam.
- ▪ Savvas Andronikou and Kristen DeStigter will be presenting as well.
- ▪ Dorothy and Joanna will send a thank you note to Damian Grattan-Smith and Andrea Rossi for being open to feature WFPI content.
• COVID 19 Corner
- o Discussion ensued on how to teach while trying to stay safe. Biggest concern is how do we keep people interested in pediatrics when they are only in the rotation for three or four months. They have had to do some of this training virtually. Since the focus on everything is adult COVID 19 at the moment, there are some who are bypassing pediatrics and not getting exposed to the specialty. Some institutions are offering 4 – 6 hours a week to lectures that they can attend even if they are not rotating with them during the month. There are some great educators offering up Zoom presentations.
- o Joanna said that in the UK they have a huge number of cases but primarily in adults. All the training in the regions is being organized by the Royal College. They have training once a week, but 2 -3 webinars a day. The training occurs on two separate days in the afternoon.
- o Useful topics are lung findings and the proper use of PPE.
- o There are training sessions going on every day, but they are not shareable. There was a discussion about WFPI collating them from all over the world. Perhaps a paper can be written.
3. Committee Updates
● Outreach Committee – Hansel Otero (HO): Gave the following updates
o Started his project with Butterfly.
o This could be a bridge to help non-physicians to do Ultrasound on children. Trying to train intrareader – 80% of the time they can use it effectively. However, they are not able to make decisions on what they see.
o The committee is still receiving 3 or 4 cases a week from Tanzania. They are turning around the diagnosis in under 8 hours.
o The committee is starting a series of webinars with the global health council with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The webinars are covering how a general pediatrician can partner with their radiology department. Increase visibility of WFPI teleradiology platform
o Kimberly Applegate wanted to know how Image Gently can help to promote WFPI work in any way. They are willing to post their imaging study reporting and recommendations. WFPI can support providing translation to other languages.
● MRI Protocol Committee - Michael Gee (MG): Michael Gee indicated that there wasn’t much new to report. The relationships with the vendor has stopped due to COVID 19. SPR was able to get some protocols online. They have been partnering with other organ committees – they have asked the committee to make a subset of the protocols. Can be partnering with SPR.
● Digital Education Committee - Sanjay Prabhu (SP): Quick update from Sanjay. All of the COVID 19 information has been put on the front page of the website. There is a Chest presentation that was posted. There are no pediatric Ultrasounds resources posted yet and no Italian or Chinese groups are represented. Sanjay spoke with Ed Lee to obtain his presentations for posting. Sanjay has been posting to Facebook as well. He needs help with Instagram. Dorothy mentioned that there are shortages of PPE everywhere. People are very interested to know how they can help. Many children are asymptomatic.
● TB Committee - Kushaljit Singh Sodhi (KSS): Dr. Sodhi was unable to attend but offered up the following.
o TB hotline and TB readers – will have a presentation at the IPR.
o Great work by the TB group – will have a chance to present at the IPR.
4. Updates on Observership
Ines Boechat (IB): Provided the following updates on the Observership Program.
● Observership in Argentina
o Under the mentorship of Jose Lipsich began December 1 and concluded on February 29, 2020
● India – Candidate will begin observership March 9, 2020.
o Not sure of the current status.
● Chile – Has been delayed.
o Dr. Cristian Garcia will be the mentor
o Program was to begin 6/1/2020
o COVID 19 has hit hard in Chile so they are delaying plans to start the observership until more is known and the local pandemic situation has stabilized.
● South Africa –
o Dr. Tracy Kilbourne will be the lead mentor.
o The initial schedule was revised to begin on 9/1/2020.
● Ines indicated that we need to get evaluations from the follows. Hopefully, we can get that done very quickly to show the outcomes. How it affected their work. Jennifer reported that an evaluation survey has been started and will be shared with WFPI leadership for review/revision/approval following the meeting.
Action: Evaluations to be sent to the candidates.
5. Nominations
● Vice President – SLARP - Andrés García Bayce
● Vice Treasurer and Representative Director – AFSPI - John Chris Rodrigues
● Representative Director – SPR - Taylor Chung, MD
6. New Business
● Meetings: These reports will be presented at the next meeting.
o SPR 2020: Cancelled
o SLARP 2020 (at the SPR meeting) – Cancelled
o ESPR 2020 – Marseille Cancelled
● Virtual General Assembly:
o June 18, 2020
● 10th WFPI Anniversary at IPR 2020 Rome, Italy:
o Update of mapping project?
o A poster/presentation about the WFPI achievements, the international fellowships and adoption of MR protocols are also possibilities.
Next EXCOM meeting:
Thursday 6/18/2020 – 8:00 am – 9:00 am (CST)
[EXCOM meetings typically take place on the first Thursday of every other month)
• Executive Council August 6th by conference call @ 9:00 am EST
• October 1st by conference call @ 9:00 am EST
• November 30th in person at the RSNA meeting which takes the place of the scheduled December meeting.
• We resume in February 4th, 2021 by conference call.