Q&A: BRAINWeek emerges from pandemic with ‘new perspectives’ on care
The BRAINWeek 2022 annual conference is set to take place from Sept. 28 to Sept. 30 in Las Vegas and promises to offer provocative subject matter along with valuable in-person networking opportunities.
Conference faculty members Gregory Pontone, MD, MHS, and Michael Clark, MD, MPH, MBA, spoke with Healio about what to expect as the conference emerges from the shadow of COVID-19 to welcome fellow professionals on a larger stage.
Pontone is director of the Parkinson's Disease Neuropsychiatry Clinic and associate professor at Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Michael Clark, MD, MPH, MBA, is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences and retains a faculty position at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Healio: What would you consider to be the highlights of the meeting?
Pontone: Some of the highlights of this year’s meeting are a broader catalog of neurodegenerative disorders, in particular, a greater variety of content on movement disorders and increased depth of content — covering both clinical management and mechanism.
Clark: The highlights of BRAINWeek are the unique faculty who are coming together in the spirit of demonstrating how some of the most common and incapacitating diseases of the brain can be overcome through effective management with an interdisciplinary collaborative care model.
Healio: Would this year’s event be the first to be held live since COVID? Can you compare and contrast your feelings on live vs. virtual meetings for an event of this scale?
Pontone: There have been weekend meetings in person since 2019, a live virtual conference in 2020 and a track at PAINWeek in 2021, but this is the first larger “full force” presentation. I think we are all looking forward to it and the networking opportunities it provides.
Clark: I'm personally looking forward to in-person meetings. While virtual meetings have shown us that we can overcome just about any hurdle that threatens education, there is just no substitute for meeting face-to-face and building relationships outside of the actual lectures.
Healio: What new subjects, presentations and events can attendees expect at the meeting this year?
Pontone: I expect a large turnout and a lot of new, innovative presentations. I think the pandemic has changed our assumptive world about the way care can be delivered; this has generated new perspectives that will be reflected in the course content.
Clark: This year's conference builds on prior meetings with engaging topics that foster conversations around practical treatments of brain diseases coupled with management strategies that practitioners can apply in their own clinics.
Healio: Can you provide a sneak peek of your own presentation(s)?
Clark: I'll be speaking about bereavement and grief, covering some of the latest science on the pathways in the brain that generate our most basic emotions, and then moving out to the level of the work each of us has to perform while grieving to rebuild relationships and set our loss into an appropriate context.
For more information on BRAINWeek, go to brainweek.org.