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 SPOTLIGHT ON THE ADM
Congresswoman & Supermodel Filmmaker to Appear
This year's Annual District Meeting (ADM) will feature a sitting member of Congress as well as a supermodel filmmaker with an important message about maternal mortality. Register by Clicking Here and join us October 28-30 at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan.
Scientific Program Chairs Frank Chervenak, MD, FACOG and John T. Queenan, Jr., MD, FACOG have been hard at work on this year's event. The ADM program features renowned faculty addressing topics ranging from cervical ultrasound and progesterone for the prevention of  preterm birth to how to prevent liability exposure. Back by popular demand, there will also be a hands-on workshop: Laparoscopic Techniques in Advanced Gynecologic Surgery and two DaVinci robots.
Presenting this year's key note address is Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, M.D. She will share her story of transitioning from a physician to Congresswoman and how her background in medicine helped in the preparation for her new profession. In addition, supermodel and  filmmaker Christy Turlington Burns will be our special guest as she speaks about her documentary No Woman, No Cry - which addresses maternal mortality through vignettes of four at-risk pregnant women in four parts of the world.
Don't miss the ADM - October 28-30.
If you have any questions, please call the District II office at (518) 436-3461.
Junior Fellow News
Annual District II Meeting
Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, MD Junior Fellow Research Day Contest
Do you have an abstract from your resident or fellow research project that you would like to share with nationally renowned physicians? The 2011 Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, MD Junior Fellow Research Day Contest is an opportunity for Junior Fellows of District II to showcase their research. Abstracts must be sent to ACOG District II by September 30th for judging. The top three research abstracts will be presented during the plenary session on Friday, October 28th with the winning author receiving a $1,000 travel stipend to attend the ACOG Annual Clinical Meeting (ACM), May 5-9, 2012, in San Diego, California. Click Here for more information and for submission.
Martin L. Stone, MD Research Day Poster Session
All participants in the Junior Fellow Research Day Contest are required to display their research in the Martin L. Stone, MD Research Day Poster Session at the ADM. Posters will be judged by meeting attendees with the winner receiving a separate $1,000 cash prize. Click Here for complete Research Day details.
2011-2012 Donald F. Richardson Memorial Prize Paper Award - Call for Papers
In addition to the above two contests and awards, District II Junior Fellows are eligible to submit a full research paper entitling them to compete nationally for the Donald F. Richardson Memorial Prize Paper Award. District II Junior Fellows are encouraged to submit a full paper from basic science or clinical research for a chance to win $1,000 cash, plus $750 for travel expenses to attend the 2012 Annual Clinical Meeting. Click Here for additional information and to submit your research.
Questions?
Please contact Jessica Atrio, ACOG District II Junior Fellow Chair, at jessicaatrio@gmail.com.
Bring Canned Goods to the ADM
Make a Difference
District II Junior Fellows are organizing a canned goods drive at the Annual District Meeting. The effort is to support Safe Horizon, the largest victims' services agency in America, with nearly 60 locations serving children, adults, and families affected by crime and abuse throughout New York City. Click Here to learn more about Safe Horizon.
Canned goods will be collected during all three days of the ADM (Oct. 28-30). Look for boxes at the Grand Hyatt to make your donation. Each product you donate will get you a raffle ticket for a drawing on Sunday, Oct 30 (the prize is yet to be determined).
If you have any questions, please contact the District II Junior Fellow Secretary/Treasurer Carolina Bibbo, MD, at carolina.bibbo@mountsinai.org.
 From the Executive Director
Donna Montalto, MPP
September
Last year, the American rock band Daughtry released a wonderful mid-tempo ballad inspired by the song writer/composer himself, Chris Daughtry, about his childhood memories growing up with his brother in a small town in North Carolina. (Set your Pandora to Daughtry to hear the song.) I am reminded of the song this month as the lyrics talk about years going by, time flying and memories remaining. Here at the District II office, our summer days have come and gone very quickly and the memories of the legislative session seem a distant past. We are gearing up for the best-ever Annual District Meeting, the return of the Legislature, three new grant programs including our first ever smartphone offering, a new Well-Women health/advocacy website, and the addition of a few hundred physicians to our District II membership.
As we venture into autumn, I hope you have the opportunity to experience New York's beautiful foliage, take a stroll in the crisp fall air, and of course, join us at the Annual District Meeting. This is also the perfect time of year to get involved at District II. We have numerous committee and task force opportunities. If you are interested, send your CV and areas of interest to info@ny.acog.org. I look forward to hearing from you!
Albany Connection
Go Face to Face with Lawmakers NOW On Issues that Affect YOU
Because of your hard work, collective negotiations legislation passed in the New York State Senate for the first time ever. ACOG members must continue to advocate for the passage of this important legislation in the upcoming 2012 session. Medical malpractice reform for physicians continues to go unaddressed by policy makers in New York State. ACOG will persevere as we continue to fight for true reform for obstetrician-gynecologists.
The Legislature is currently not in session - state representatives are in their district offices conducting meetings and working on constituent issues. This is the perfect opportunity to meet with your legislator's in their district office to discuss your practice and the medical care you provide for women.
ACOG staff can assist you in scheduling and preparing for these meetings with talking points, meeting materials and physician information. If you are interested in meeting with your legislator, please contact Courtney Ronner at the ACOG office at cronner@ny.acog.org or at (518) 436-3461.
ACOG Leadership Institute
The ACOG Leadership Institute offers a series of workshops with highly recognized physicians, lawyers, journalists, and leadership experts, to give ob-gyns the tools they need to accomplish the goal of Leading Transformation in the 21st Century for Women's Healthcare. District II Fellows who participated in the Leadership Institute program this past April give their testimonials below.
 Laura MacIsaac, MD, FACOG
The ACOG National Leadership Institute was the most insightful professional development experience I have had to date. The faculty were outstanding, practical, positive, enlightened leaders with deep sense of passion and mission. The experience was a real journey into what our individual skills, vulnerabilities, values, and areas that will make us happy and effective people really were, including both professional and personal lives as part of that analysis. The peer learning and team building was almost as useful as the faculty mentorship. I cannot recommend it highly enough or thank you enough for the opportunity to participate. One of the many take home messages: "Know yourself, get over yourself, and do great things for the greater good."
 Sandra McCalla, MD, FACOG
I have just returned from the ACOG National Leadership Institute and want to express my thanks for having been given this opportunity. The experience was enriching and allowed for introspection and self discovery. In addition, I brought back a bag full of tools which I know will enhance my professional and personal experiences. I had a wonderful time.
 Adina Keller, MD, FACOG
Thank you for sending me to ACOG's Leadership Conference in Chapel Hill. It was an unbelievable and priceless experience. I feel like I have been given a gift. Claudia Fernandez, DrPH is a remarkable woman and did an amazing job leading the conference. Thank you so much !
 Ana G. Cepin, MD, FACOG
The Leadership Institute was definitely one of the best professional experiences I've ever had. I met some wonderful people and acquired skills which I will use forever.
Medical Education
Free Immunization Materials!
 Over the summer, you should have received District II’s latest publication: Immunization Resource Guide for Ob-Gyns and Their Patients: Incorporating Vaccines into Routine Care. This is the first component in a series of comprehensive educational tools under the Well-Woman Educational Initiative: Once a year, Every year.
The goal of this initiative is to increase provider and patient knowledge on aspects of the annual well-woman visit, and ensure that ob-gyns are fully prepared to serve as a comprehensive primary resource for healthcare throughout a woman's lifespan.
The immunization resource guide provides practical information and resources for administering immunizations in your practice. A downloadable smartphone application is also in development. These tools can serve as a framework for care, which may be provided by a single physician or a team of healthcare professionals and should be adapted as necessary to meet patients' needs. In addition, the vaccine questionnaire was developed to help you initiate a discussion with your patients about the importance of receiving vaccinations.
If you have yet to receive these materials in your office, please contact Kelly Gilchrist, Medical Education and Patient Safety Manager in the District II office at (518) 436-3461 or at kgilchrist@ny.acog.org.
Coming Soon!! Well-Woman Website
In the coming weeks, District II will launch a Well-Woman website - which will provide women valuable health information, while encouraging them to visit their ob-gyn once a year - every year. Through the website, women will have the opportunity to receive volumes of health education on numerous topics of interest. In addition, the patient driven site will ultimately feature a section dedicated to health care policies of interest - including medical liability reform. Women will be encouraged to sign up for the Well-Woman Network, which will be the advocacy arm of the website. Subscribers will receive action alerts when their health care is jeopardized by legislative actions (or the lack thereof) from specific members of the legislature.
Stay tuned for more information regarding the launch of the Well-Woman website and how YOU can get your patients involved.
Have you taken our survey on elective deliveries prior to 39 weeks yet? Help us collect data for our newest initiative.
 Free! FASD Patient Education Materials
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) is an umbrella term that describes the range of effects that can occur in an individual whose mother drank during pregnancy.
Just a reminder that District II has free FASD patient education materials available, including a patient education video. Funded by the New York State Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, the piece discusses why it is so vital for pregnant women to stop drinking during pregnancy. The video, which features Richard Goyer, MD, FACOG, is currently available on the District II website and YouTube. Please download it and share it with your patients and colleagues.
For more information and materials (including posters and our FASD prevention handbook), visit the FASD section of the District II website.
Patient Safety
Is the Relentless Rise in Cesarean Delivery Rates a Problem?
Gustavo San Roman, MD, FACOG
Founder, Birthrisk.com, LLC
 The cesarean delivery rate in the United States has increased by almost 60% from 1996 to 2009. In 2009 there were seven hospitals in New York State with a cesarean delivery rate of over 50%. The attitude of many of the obstetricians that I have spoken with seems to be one of limited concern. After all, why should we be concerned? No one seems to be concerned that we get sued for every bad outcome and no one seems to be concerned that reduced reimbursements have resulted in enormous patient loads. So what's the problem with an increasing cesarean delivery rate?
The problem is that the cost of the increasing number of cesarean deliveries is no longer sustainable. As a result, health care administrators in several states have started to impose financial penalties for cesarean deliveries. Unfortunately, since administrators do not have a good method for risk adjusting cesarean delivery rates, they are imposing these penalties across the board or with methods that ignore the risk factors contained in your population of patients. Since administrators never share in the decision to perform or not to perform a cesarean delivery, it follows that obstetricians and obstetricians alone have the ability to address the increasing cesarean delivery rate. However, before we can address the increasing cesarean delivery rate, we will need a better method to measure the results of how we manage our pregnant patients. The software tools at Birthrisk.com provide that method.
The software tools I developed use a dynamic database of laboring women which is used to create a risk adjusted cesarean delivery rate called the Birthrisk Cesarean Birth Measure. The software compares each delivery to a growing database which currently contains over 285,000 deliveries in order to find the last 100 women with similar physical characteristics who have labored anywhere in the same state. The percentage of these 100 women who had a cesarean delivery represents the degree of difficulty for this woman to have a vaginal delivery. Once you know the average degree of difficulty for a population of patients, then a simple comparison of the cesarean delivery rate to the average degree of difficulty of these patients creates the Birthrisk Cesarean Birth Measure.
I have presented my software tools to the ACOG District II Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Committee, which is currently evaluating the Birthrisk Cesarean Birth Measure for use in a state-wide data collection project. A state-wide data collection project would provide every hospital and every obstetrical care provider in the project with their Birthrisk Cesarean Birth Measure. In the meantime you can find out your own Birthrisk Cesarean Birth Measure by taking the free Birthrisk.com Challenge found at www.Birthrisk.com. Details about my work can be found in the Information for Healthcare Professional’s page on my website.
We are currently at a crossroads in obstetrics. We can choose the path paved by the bitterness and resentment created by our current liability climate or we can choose the path that was paved by the oath that we took when we became physicians. That oath contained the following statement: "I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings." My special obligation starts with my six daughters and ends with all of our daughters. I ask that all obstetricians remember that it is our obligation to address the relentless rise in the cesarean delivery rate. Only after we meet this obligation will anyone consider helping us with our concerns.
Membership
John Gibbons Medical Student Travel Award
Lori Homa, MD
In the first year of medical school I went to my first ACOG Annual Clinical Meeting. The energy of the conference was palpable even outside of the conference center. As I sat in the conference halls and walked among the crowd, I felt honored and inspired to be in the presence of so many important leaders in our field. There was an overwhelming wealth of knowledge in that building. I knew that I had so much to gain by being there, more than possible in just a few days. From that conference I knew that I wanted to stay involved in ACOG for the rest of my career.
For the following Annual District Meeting I started a forum for medical students to share obstetrics and gynecology interest group ideas. This meeting was such a success that it expanded into the medical student program at the ADM and a full day medical student workshop at the ACM. I never would have believed that my idea would have blossomed into such a big program, but that is the amazing part of ACOG. Everyone has the chance to make a difference with the support of the College.
With the help of the John Gibbons Medical Student Award I was able to attend another ACM. Since then I have attended six Clinical Meetings. I have been active in congress at the Congressional Leadership Conference and have continued my involvement in ACOG through residency as the District II Junior Fellow Section 10 Chair. I understand that through ACOG I can make a difference and contribute to the future of our field.
I hope that the John Gibbons Medical Student Award continues offer students the opportunity to attend the ACM so that they can catch that wave of excitement that will catapult them into life-long involvement with ACOG. It is a powerful experience that will help create our future leaders.
Click Here for further information on the John Gibbons Medical Student Travel Award.
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