Highlights of the Upcoming SGIM 2024 Annual Meeting

On behalf of our colleagues on the SGIM 2024 Planning Committee and at SGIM, we are delighted to share a few exciting details about the Annual Meeting.

The SGIM 2024 Annual Meeting (#SGIM24) will take place in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, at the Sheraton Boston Hotel and Hynes Convention Center on May 15-18, 2024. Nested within the vibrant commercial area of Boylston Street, Newbury Street, and Copley Square, the meeting will provide attendees with an abundance of walking, shopping, and food options. The meeting will also renew our community’s sense of energy as the Boston weather turns towards summer.

Building on the success of last year’s meeting in Denver, Colorado, interest in this year’s meeting is peaking, having surpassed several records for submissions. Our colleagues and trainees across the country submitted 835 Scientific Abstracts (most since the pandemic), and 966 Clinical Vignettes (the highest number in the last decade). There were more Innovations in Medical Education and Innovations in Health Care Delivery (more than 200 in both categories) submitted in 2024 than in nearly all prior years.

These record-high submissions signify that SGIM is growing, especially among younger members. These submissions also mean that our colleagues on the Planning Committee have worked hard to conduct peer reviews and adjudicate submissions for the meeting program. We are indebted to them for their time, diligence, and thoughtfulness in putting the substantive content into the Annual Meeting program. The flip side of more submissions is more difficult decisions. Among the record 78 Special Symposia submitted, the meeting could only accommodate 10 (13% acceptance rate). Among the 350 Workshops submitted (the first time exceeding 300 submissions), there was capacity for only 90 (26% acceptance rate). Many excellent ideas were confronted by the lack of space—turning down these submissions was painful. On the other hand, it allowed the meeting committee the chance to offer a truly outstanding menu of learning opportunities in clinical, research, and other domains of generalist practice.

This collective effort on submissions was led by Drs. Rashmi Jasrasaria and Nick Cuneo for Special Symposia; Drs. Anne Smeraglio and Jessica Donato for Workshops; Drs. Michael Barnett, Lucinda Leung, and Eric Yudelevich for Scientific Abstracts; Drs. Dominique Cosco and Steve Fuest for Clinical Vignettes; Drs. Tamara Godfrey and Katie Sullivan for Clinical Updates; Drs. Tim Mercer and Sarah Stella for Innovations in Healthcare Delivery; Drs. Martin Fried and Chris Chiu for Innovations in Medical Education; and Drs. Ian Kronish and Valerie Press for Interest Groups. Drs. Ishani Ganguli and Pooja Lagisetty are leading the effort to recognize winners for the Hamolsky & Lipkin Awards.

We are also indebted to colleagues on the Planning Committee who are working to make the Annual Meeting meaningful and educational outside of the submitted content. Drs. Chana Sacks and Anders Chen are leading the inaugural integration of a national advocacy theme into the Annual Meeting: reducing the burden of firearm injuries. Drs. Delaney Goulet and Milad Memari are making mentoring a core part of the meeting in coordination with Jillian Gann, SGIM Director of Leadership and Mentoring Programs, by creating new opportunities for senior members to connect with junior members during the meeting. Drs. Emily Mullen and Anthi Katsouli are supporting a larger slate of pre-courses this year: they include established offerings, such as the ACLGIM Hess Leadership Institute and the POCUS Pre-Course led by Drs. Rob Smola and Michael Wager, as well as the new US Deprescribing Research Network pre-course and GIM Fellows Symposium.

Programming for Students, Residents, and Fellows is organized by Drs. Sara Spinella and Matthew Metzinger. Special Programming, including the annual trivia night, is led by Drs. Allie Dakroub and Eduardo Mulanovich. The VA Special Series, led by Drs. Amanda Mixon and Amy Linsky, includes a new workshop by the VA on the approach to patients at risk of firearm injury. Indispensable for an SGIM Annual Meeting, Drs. Elisa Sottile and Brigid Dolan are leading the MOC component of the content; meanwhile, Drs. Chris Jackson and Desiree Burroughs-Ray are heading up the Evaluations component of the meeting. With a commitment toward future generations, Drs. Elizabeth Gillespie and Heather Whelan are leading the way in making the Annual Meeting’s carbon footprint more sustainable.

Each session—whether focused on research, medical education, clinical practice, or innovation—is poised to deliver useful take-home learning points for attendees. Within a subset of these sessions, expert discussants will join presenters in putting the new data and findings into the context of the broader clinical evidence or field. The Special Symposia and Workshops will provide hands-on training and broader perspectives pertaining to key concerns of SGIM membership, including women’s health, primary care financing, and making a difference in state health policy.

In addition, a highlight of the Annual Meeting will be a trio of poignant, thought-provoking Plenary sessions. On Thursday, May 16, 2024, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021-23) and Professor of Medicine at Harvard, will speak about advancing public health through building interdisciplinary bridges—supporting the SGIM 2024 meeting theme of relationship coordination. Protecting the population’s health is a noble, necessary, and daunting calling. In leading the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and through her decades of academic and clinical leadership in infectious disease, Dr. Walensky has lived this calling. Her plenary promises to instill insightful lessons for us all.

On Friday, May 17, 2024, Dr. Rachel Levine, the 17th Assistant Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will talk about the many challenges and opportunities facing medicine today. As leader of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the former Secretary of Health and Surgeon General for Pennsylvania, Dr. Levine’s exceptional expertise draws from clinical practice, academia, and policy. Her work strives to give every person in the country the opportunity for health and well-being, and her plenary will serve as a source of inspiration.

On Saturday, May 18, 2024, the unique plenary session centers on the Annual Meeting’s advocacy theme—reducing the burden of firearm injuries. Designed by Dr. Chana Sacks, a leading expert on firearm injuries, this plenary brings together an interdisciplinary group of community leaders, survivors of firearm injury, media experts, and physicians to provide SGIM members a clinically high-yield approach to address and prevent firearm injuries. The burden of firearm injuries nationwide continues to grow, yet learning how to talk with or work with patients and families who experience this trauma is not a routine part of medical education. Saturday’s plenary will provide the generalist community concrete, useful tools for day-to-day clinical practice, where clinicians increasingly face the need to find the words to initiate this work with affected patients and family members.

We are grateful to SGIM President Dr. Martha Gerrity for the privilege of helping to plan the Annual Meeting. It is an honor to work with such an amazing group of peers around the country. Members of the SGIM Council, including Drs. Brita Roy and Eric Bass, CEO of SGIM, have also supported us through this planning process. Other colleagues, including Dr. Michael Fischer, who leads the SGIM Health Policy Committee, have generously given their time and wise counsel on key themes of the meeting.

Finally, we are indebted, in more ways than we can express, to our colleagues on the SGIM staff—including Corrine Melissari, CMP, Loubna Bennaoui, Francine Jetton, MA, CAE, Erika Baker, Kay Ovington, CAE, Dawn Haglund, MA, CAE, and others—who make the meeting possible for all of us in the Society. Long before the holidays, when plans for the next Annual Meeting were distant for most, they had landed in Boston, walked through every room in the Annual Meeting venue, and ensured all the logistics of the meeting would run smoothly. This is unsung, often thankless work. They deserve our full gratitude!

The 2024 Annual Meeting aims to reflect the values, commitment, and vision of the SGIM community in ways that sustain our shared purpose through years to come. We hope that many of you will be able to make it. On behalf of the Planning Committee, we look forward to seeing you in Boston this Spring! #SGIM24