Outlook: Newsletter of the Society of Behavorial Medicine

Spring 2020

President's Message

Michael Diefenbach, PhD, SBM President

Michael Diefenbach, PhD, SBM president
Michael Diefenbach, PhD
SBM President

Dear Colleagues:

I hope you and your families are well during this time of uncertainty. My heart is going out to all of you who are feeling unwell or have family members who are sick, in quarantine or are sheltering in place. I’m speaking to you from the epicenter of the pandemic, New York City where thousands have been impacted. We are a resilient nation and am hopeful that we will get through these challenging times. We are also a resilient society. It is not a time for slowing down our pursuit of scientific inquiry and productivity but to take this opportunity to share our science creatively.

Last week is when we would have held our Annual Meeting in San Francisco. It feels much longer now than the 4 weeks since the declaration of a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, and a public emergency by the US Government. All of this made it impossible to hold a meeting. You know that we did not make this decision lightly, but these events and the health of our members, the community of San Francisco and your own community was, and still is, our biggest concern.

Putting a conference together is a year-long process, we usually start in May right after the meeting to gear up for another year. So, you can imagine that canceling a meeting is not simple either. The society entered into several contracts: with the hotel, the A/V company, for catering, and so on. The process of cancelling them is governed by various terms, actions and official pronouncements. Given the reality that we are unable to hold our meeting in person, we turn to two other priorities: First, to present our program and science in an alternative way, and second, to ensure that the society can function in future years. Speaking of the financial future, everybody who registered to attend the meeting will get their registration refunded over the coming weeks.

Our annual meeting is my favorite scientific event of the year, and I can’t tell you how much I miss seeing you, listening to our science and learning from you and our keynote and master lecture presenters. The Program Committee, under Alison Phillips’ leadership, and I have thought about ways to bring some of the exciting activities we had planned to you. Here is what we have planned so far:

  • First, if you haven’t done so, please download the SBM annual meeting conference app in your app store. The app is called “SBM Events” and here you will eventually find all abstracts of accepted papers, panel discussions, symposia, and posters.
  • Second, in the coming weeks everybody who has an accepted paper and/or poster submission will be invited to submit a PDF of their paper/poster to SBM. The poster will be accessible through the online planner and the conference app. I recommend reserving some time to peruse the papers and posters, just as you would have done during the annual meeting. You might also want to contact your colleague and have a virtual dialogue about their and your work. It might lead to new collaborations.
  • Just as every year, all abstracts will be published in a special issue of our Journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine
  • Tracey Revenson, the new editor of Annals also has confirmed that she will reserve space for a write-up of all the keynote and master lectures in one of the upcoming issues that will be published over the summer.
  • individual SIGs will organize virtual business meetings over the next weeks. So please check your emails to know what’s going on with them.
  • Finally, and very importantly, please attend  our SBM wide virtual business meeting, which is scheduled for April 27th at 4:00pm Eastern Time. All members are invited, and you will hear presentations about SBM’s activities over the past year, its membership status and most importantly you will hear from incoming President Dr. Monica Baskin about her plans for the year. Be sure to mark your calendar for that.

I’m sure there will be other developments in the coming weeks and we will communicate them as they happen via email, our website, and our social media channels.

I know these are difficult times and it might not always be easy to keep your spirits up. But we as behavioral scientists can draw on our collective strengths to stay engaged. After all we have a strong community of friends and colleagues. During this time of forced physical isolation, let’s make sure that we connect virtually. Reach out to each other, communicate and share ideas. Hopefully you have some time to catch up on writing that manuscript that you have put off, and to think about the next research project. I urge you to not forget our conference theme this year of “Accelerating our Science” and in the spirit of provocative questions to think out of the box and to push our science forward.

I wish you good health and all the best. Take care.