AAGP's Mission Statement
The American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) is a national association representing and serving its members and the field of geriatric psychiatry. It is dedicated to promoting the mental health and well being of older people and improving the care of those with late-life mental disorders. AAGP's mission is to enhance the knowledge base and standard of practice in geriatric psychiatry through education and research and to advocate for meeting the mental health needs of older Americans.

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If you have questions regarding the submission criteria or questions about the Annual Meeting, please contact AAGP at 301-654-7850 ext. 105 or meetinginfo@aagponline.org


INVITATION TO SUBMIT PROPOSALS

The American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry Annual Meeting Program Committee invites you to submit a proposal for consideration for the 2012 Annual Meeting to be held in Washington, D.C. March 16-19, 2012. The AAGP 2012 conference theme focuses on the need for united advocacy with a strong voice to ensure quality mental health care for our growing population of older adults. This theme was chosen to reflect the unique venue of the 2012 Annual Meeting in our nation's capital.

There are many venues at the AAGP Annual Meeting that invite innovative and interactive programs targeted towards clinicians, researchers, and educators. Clinicians and investigators in all arenas of geriatric psychiatry, psychology, neurology, medicine, nursing, social work, and other related disciplines are encouraged to submit abstracts of original work for presentation at the AAGP Annual Meeting. It is requested that all program proposals include some content on their applicability to clinical practice and with an interdisciplinary team approach, to address care from the perspective of many health care disciplines. The program committee highly encourages the involvement of trainees and early career professionals as session presenters. Please consider adding a newer member of the profession as part of your presenter panel. Additionally, submitters are encouraged to consider any special patient care needs of minority or underserved populations.

Submissions for live symposia may be made online April 15–June 15, 2011. Submissions for new research posters must be submitted no later than October 1, 2011 and submissions for early investigator posters must be submitted no later than October 15, 2011.

The AAGP Program Committee is also introducing a new type of program submission for the 2012 Annual Meeting – the Clinical Case Presentation. A select few clinical case presentations will be chosen for small interactive clinical case-based CME sessions during the regular programming. If you are interested in submitting a proposal to present a clinical case, please use the section of the abstract site that is so designated. Clinical Case Presentations may be submitted May 15 – July 15, 2011.

Please review the guidelines for submission to the AAGP Annual Meeting before submission. All abstracts will be peer-reviewed by the 2012 AAGP Annual Meeting Program Committee. Final decision of acceptance by the 2011 Annual Meeting Program Committee will be made no later than August 15, 2011; final decision of acceptance of all posters will be made no later than December 1, 2011.

Many people who attend the AAGP Annual Meeting do not attend any other scientific meeting. This is an important venue to present original research, new data, exciting clinical applications, service delivery initiatives, educational activities, and other pioneering work impacting our field today.

Paul Kirwin, MD
Chair, 2012 Annual Meeting

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GENERAL GUIDELINES

Registration and Travel Policy
All presenters must be paid registrants of the AAGP Annual Meeting. Expenses associated with the preparation, submission, and presentation of an abstract are the responsibility of the author/presenter. All speakers and presenters are expected to make their own travel arrangements and pay their own expenses (with the exception of industry supported programs and other sponsored workshop programs).

Responsibility of Faculty

Session Chair
It is the responsibility of the Session Chair to submit all abstracts for the session, including the overall abstract and the individual speaker abstracts. Once the submission is complete, each individual speakers must log on to the site to submit their Conflict of Interest Disclosures, permission to record and declaration of any off-label use discussion.

  • Organize and plan outline of session with faculty and prepare general abstract for submission;
  • Submit overall abstract for session, which includes needs assessment and 5 CME questions;
  • Submit individual speaker abstracts for each faculty member (including yourself), which include individual speaker presentation titles, individual abstracts, speaker learning objectives (at least 2 per speaker), and speaker bios;
  • Serve as the contact person for the program committee, and facilitate any changes/additions/deletions as directed by the Review Committee;
  • Work with the faculty/speakers to refine individual presentations to ensure that the program is well rounded and free from commercial bias;
  • Ensure final handouts are submitted in a timely manner.
Session Speakers
All speakers are required to log on to the abstract submission site and provide complete account information (includes contact information for the speaker, conflict of interest disclosure, permission to record, and declaration of any off-label use discussion) before a session will be considered complete.
  • Work with Session Chair and Faculty on preparation of proposed submission;
  • Provide individual abstract, CME questions, learning objectives, and other biographical information as needed for online submission;
  • Develop final presentation to ensure a well-balanced and interactive presentation that contributes to the lifelong learning;
  • Prepare and submit handouts in a timely manner.
Handouts
AAGP strongly encourages all speakers to provide handouts to accompany their oral presentation. (These may include, but are not limited to, copies of your PowerPoint presentation for the session.) AAGP will make these handouts available to the 2012 Annual Meeting attendees via the AAGP meeting website prior to the meeting. This ensures that all participants will receive your materials, even those who are unable to attend your session. All materials must be submitted to AAGP by January 15, 2012. Absence of handout materials makes the speaker and AAGP appear unprepared, so please send your materials by the deadline. If you submit copyrighted material, you are responsible for obtaining written permission to use the material. Handouts for each program are reviewed to ensure compliance with ACCME guidelines on well-balanced presentation of content. Specific instructions on developing PowerPoint slides for presentation at the AAGP Annual Meeting will be provided to all faculty upon acceptance of their program.

Disclosure of Conflict Of Interest
The American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) requires disclosure by presenters at CME activities of any financial interest or other affiliation with commercial organization(s) that may have a direct or indirect impact on the subject matter of the scientific program. AAGP's policy on disclosure applies to financial interests of a presenter's spouse/partner as well. A "financial interest" may include, but is not limited to, being a shareholder in the organization; being on retainer with the organization; or having research or honoraria paid by the organization. An "affiliation" may include holding a position on an advisory committee or some other role or benefit to a supporting organization. The existence of such relationships does not necessarily constitute a conflict of interest, but the prospective audience must be informed of the presenter's affiliation with every commercial supporter by an acknowledgment in the slides as well as orally at the start of every session. In addition, each faculty who identify a potential conflict will be asked to identify steps to resolve that conflict. This policy is intended to openly identify any potential conflict(s) so that members of the audience in an educational activity are able to form their own judgments about the presentation. AAGP also requires oral disclosure of discussion of unapproved uses of a commercial product or investigational use of a product not yet approved for this purpose.

Eligibility
You do not need to be a member of AAGP to submit an abstract. Clinicians and investigators in all arenas of geriatric psychiatry, psychology, neurology, medicine, nursing, social work, and other related disciplines are encouraged to submit abstracts of original work for presentation at the AAGP Annual Meeting. AAGP also welcomes the involvement of trainees and early career professionals as presenters.

Limit on Presentations
A speaker's name may be submitted for multiple symposia. However, if all of the proposed symposia are accepted, any speaker at the AAGP Annual Meeting is limited to only participating in four educational programs (industry supported and non-industry supported). If a speaker is listed as faculty on more than four programs, the speaker will be asked to find an appropriate substitute for one of the programs. This policy does not apply to scientific poster presentations. If a speaker is on more than one industry supported symposium, they may only receive a travel stipend and an honorarium for one sponsored session.

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ABSTRACT SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Submit your proposal online at http://aagp2012.abstractcentral.com beginning April 15.

Please print the Online Submission Directions and use them to help you successfully complete your submission

Word Limit. All abstracts have a 5,000-character limit, excluding title and author information but including spaces.

Submission Deadline. You may save and edit your submission at any time prior to submitting it to AAGP. The submission deadlines are as follows:

  • General sessions: June 15, 2011, 11:59 PM EDT.
  • Clinical Case presentations: July 15, 2011, 11:59 PM EDT (submissions will open on May 15, 2011)
  • New Research poster abstracts: October 1, 2011, 11:59 PM EDT.
  • Early Investigator poster abstracts: October 15, 2011, 11:59 PM EDT
.

Publication. By submitting a proposal through this Call for Presentations, you give AAGP the authority to electronically post your presentation, abstract, and learning objectives online, and to publish them in printed materials. You are responsible for editing your abstract and providing copy in final, print-ready form. However, AAGP reserves the right to edit any part of the abstract submission for consistency, grammar and target audience as we deem necessary.

Review. All session abstracts are reviewed by the AAGP Annual Meeting Program Committee and ranked on the basis of scientific merit and educational needs of AAGP attendees. All accepted session and poster abstracts will be published and distributed to all meeting attendees in a supplement to the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

The Annual Meeting Program Committee's decisions are final. Review is based on the following criteria:

  • Relevance to identified attendee needs
  • Inclusion of new data
  • Timeliness of topic
  • Diversity among presenters
  • Presentation balance between research and practice applications
  • Applicability to practice of geriatric psychiatry
  • Relationship to the Annual Meeting theme

Please note that potentially outstanding presentations are, at times, given a lower priority score because the information and data supplied with the submission were incomplete or inappropriate for a particular format.

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CONTENT AREAS

The AAGP Annual Meeting provides educational opportunities for a diverse audience. In order to accommodate the wide-ranging spectrum of educational needs for those who provide mental health services for the elderly, the program committee makes every effort to create a balanced educational experience. To that end, the following categories are suggested as broad content guidelines.

Suggested topics include:

  • Disease management interventions (dementia, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, substance abuse, sleep disorders, PTSD, etc.) for the range of psychiatric issues that impact older adults and their impact on quality of life
  • Age-related changes in pharmacologic response, vulnerability to adverse outcomes
  • Psychiatric manifestations of medical diseases, i.e., delirium
  • Complementary treatment approaches and psychosocial interventions
  • Strategies to enhance successful living in the face of medical comorbidity
  • Ethical issues such as advance directives and end-of-life care
  • Novel interdisciplinary team models for the treatment of the elderly
  • Unique psychosocial and care needs of special populations including racial and ethnic minority elderly, women, and the gay and lesbian population
  • Neuroimaging of late-life mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases
  • Advances in basic science research in relation to aging
  • Practice management issues such as electronic medical records, getting started in practice, coding and reimbursement
  • Sessions focused on nursing home practices including outcomes measurement, inter-disciplinary staff models, addressing behavioral issues among nursing home patients
  • Application of new research to clinical practice
  • Public policy and regulatory initiatives impacting aging and mental health
  • Response to Trauma/Disaster in the context of aging
  • Resources and initiatives to assist academic training directors maintain and enhance innovative resident and fellowship tracks
  • Family and caregiver issues related to aging and complex medical problems
PRESENTATION FORMATS

General Session Submissions
Each symposium may have no more than 4 presenters, including the chair and discussants. Each session will be 90 minutes, with at least 20 minutes committed to audience participation. Please note that given the time period, fewer speakers will lead to a more in-depth presentation. Over the past several years, sessions have included case presentation discussions, interactive audience response, debates, and traditional lectures. AAGP encourages innovative educational programming that promotes clinical application of best practices and treatment for the elderly. Refer to the Online Submission Directions for detailed submission instructions.

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Clinical Case Presentations
Submit your individual case presentation, for consideration in one of the clinical case-based discussion sessions. (This submission module will open on May 15; due by July 15.) Each case presentation should be 20-30 minutes. The program committee may combine 2-3 case presentations to create a 90-minute CME session, with ample time for audience participation and discussion. Refer to the Online Submission Directions for detailed submission instructions.

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New Research Posters
Posters are self-explanatory visual presentations of research work. Abstracts should not be submitted for consideration as a poster presentation if publication in a scientific journal is anticipated before March 19, 2012. Abstracts for accepted posters will be published in AAGP's journal, the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, and distributed to attendees on site. AAGP will not edit poster abstracts, so please ensure that the written submission is in final form. Abstracts cannot be withdrawn from publication after December 15, 2011. The presenter is required to be present during specified poster session hours for informal discussions about their research with meeting attendees. Posters will be attached to a bulletin board that measures 45" (vertical) by 90" (horizontal).

Please note that the use of trade names of pharmacologic agents in the abstract title or the abstract itself is prohibited. If the research was partially or fully funded by a proprietary organization (e.g., a pharmaceutical company), a statement to that effect must be included at the bottom of the body of the abstract.

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Early Investigator Designation
This special section is a sub-set of the New Research Posters, designed to highlight the research of medical students, residents, research fellows and clinical fellows, as well as junior faculty and K-awardees who are no more than 2 years post fellowship training. If you wish to be considered in this special category, please submit under the Early Investigator submission role when submitting your abstract online.

Refer to the Online Submission Directions for detailed submission instructions.

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Industry-Supported Symposia
Industry-supported symposia include a meal function and are supported through educational grants. Symposia will include 30 minutes for meal service before the program starts and 90 minutes for program presentations with at least 20 minutes dedicated to a question and answer period. Each symposium may have no more than 4 presenters, including the chair and discussants. There is a rolling admission deadline for industry-supported symposia until all the limited slots are filled. The first review of the proposed programs will be in early July, so submission of proposals by June 30, 2011 is optimal for early decisions and first choice of time slots.

For more detailed information on industry-supported symposia, please refer to Industry Supported Symposia Policies and Guidelines. Please note that proposals for industry-supported symposia should not be submitted via the online abstract submission site. If you wish to propose an industry-supported symposia program, please contact Marj Vanderbilt at mvanderbilt@aagponline.org or 301-654-7850 ext. 107.

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