Thursday, February 19, 2004
Meeting #4
Orlando, FL

Participants

Mike Barry (Staff), Jennifer Bretsch (Staff), Sherry Crump, Art Elster (AMA), Susan Rosenthal (UTMB), Nancy Sheehan, Marty Wasserman, Tom Zink.[1]

I. Welcome and Introductions
Dr. Nancy Sheehan called the meeting to order at 7:04 a.m., welcomed everyone and led introductions. Dr. Sheehan served as Chairperson of the committee in David Katz’ absence.

II. Committee Operations
Mike Barry reviewed the committee’s charge and activities to date since its work began in the fall of 2002. He noted that the committee’s purpose is to guide the development of ACPM’s adolescent health activities and share their expertise with members of the College. To date, the committee has developed several educational sessions for ACPM’s annual meetings, offered ACPM’s first educational webcast in conjunction with WebMD/Medscape, completed one policy statement, and contributed content to ACPM’s quarterly newsletter and website. Additionally, David Katz also serves as Chairperson of the Preventive Medicine Coalition on Adolescent Health.

Dr. Sheehan asked the committee if they were pleased with the committee’s charge and operations since it has been functioning for more than a year. The committee’s feedback was positive and members thought the operations and production of the committee were going very well. The staff welcomes any additional input from members of the committee that were not present at the in-person meeting.

III. National Teleconference 2004

Jennifer Bretsch noted that ACPM will convene its second educational program via webcast this summer in cooperation with WebMD/Medscape. The webcast topic will be related to preventing adolescent overweight and obesity. The committee offered suggestions for specific issues to address during the webcast. Ideas discussed included:

-The content of the session could address both the clinic setting and population-based settings and could raise new potential research questions at the individual and population levels.

-The content of the session could address how counseling adolescents on proper nutrition and physical activity could make a difference; the challenges of referring to other health professionals such as nutritionists, dieticians, exercise physiologists.

-The content of the session could address whether obesity is actually a disease; reimbursement issues; introduce physicians to the chronic care model (rather than the disease management model) and how to adapt it to adolescents.

Dr. Rosenthal suggested that ACPM could do more to raise its visibility when marketing the webcast to the intended audience. Dr. Sheehan noted that Medscape is probably looking for “pearls of wisdom” with a clinical focus, perhaps combined with population-based information too.

As with the first webcast, there will be no cost to participate in the one-hour teleconference and continuing medical education credits (CME) will be offered.

Action: As follow-up to this meeting, the committee will suggest additional ideas for the webcast topic, rank their preferences, and suggest appropriate speakers.

IV. Obesity, Fatty Liver Disease, Hepatitis A, and Adolescents

Dr. Tom Zink presented information about the connection between obesity, fatty liver disease, hepatitis A, and adolescents. He provided several recent research articles in advance to the committee related to these topics. Dr. Zink noted that a significant number of obese adolescents in the U.S. may be at higher risk for hepatitis A and B infections because of the increased prevalence of nonalcoholic fatty live disease among this population. He suggested that perhaps, adolescents with BMIs consistent with morbid obesity might need to be vaccinated in order to prevent those infections.

Action: Dr. Zink will submit a commentary on this emerging topic for an upcoming issue of ACPM News, the College’s quarterly newsletter. ACPM members will be able to contact Dr. Zink directly to learn more about the issues.

V. Adjourn

The committee meeting adjourned at 8:02 a.m.