At our President’s Society breakfast meeting following the February Board meeting, Dr. Richard (Buzz) Goodstein from Bayer Pharmaceuticals strongly encouraged the College to establish a corporate roundtable. Since that meeting, staff have begun to explore options for how such a roundtable might be structured.

To stimulate thinking among the Board, several of these options are described briefly below. The Development Committee anticipates studying these options and making a recommendation to the Board.

From discussions with a number of people, there are several major potential benefits that corporate sponsors often receive by joining an industry partnership program.

• Membership can entitle the member to meet privately with the organization’s leadership to discuss emerging issues in the field.
• It can enable the corporate member to meet with experts in specific fields (e.g., CVD prevention) within the purview of the specialty to discuss important issues.
• Corporate membership can entitle corporate officials to join either standing committees or special interest committees of the association.
• Committees with corporate members may, with assistance from residents or young physicians, address specific topics in depth, perhaps to conduct research or develop policy statements. This helps the company identify upcoming talent in the field while also enabling the resident or young physician to develop potential employment contacts.
• Corporate membership can entitle the company to one or more registrations at the association’s annual meeting.
• Some corporate roundtable programs entitle the company to convene scientific sessions at annual meetings, usually sessions that do not conflict with regular conference sessions.

As of this writing, the College is anticipating responding to a Request for Applications from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau at HRSA for a cooperative agreement as part of MCHB’s "Partners in Program Planning for Adolescent Health." We are planning to submit a proposal, fully recognizing that this is an uphill battle since several incumbent grantees will also be applying for the available funds. We are in the process of identifying the specific activities to be carried out under the cooperative agreement.