COVID-19 takes center stage at American College of Rheumatology virtual Convergence
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COVID-19 still pulls focus in rheumatology, with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease director Anthony S. Fauci, MD, headlining a slate of blockbuster speakers at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Convergence.
Like most medical society meetings held after May, the Convergence will be held in an all-virtual format. The original schedule called for the meeting to be held Nov. 6-11 in Washington, D.C. The dates shifted to Nov. 5-9 when it was decided the Convergence would be held entirely online. The decision to go virtual was made in late spring.
“In this all-virtual environment, attendees will experience many of the things they enjoy about the ACR’s annual meeting, including favorites like the Opening Ceremony, the Great Debate and the Year in Review, as well as maintain the ability to engage in live Q&A with speakers,” ACR president Ellen M. Gravallese, MD, told Healio Rheumatology. “The biggest difference is the way in which participants will engage with presenters and with each other and, of course, how they will access the content.”
The meeting will feature daily educational sessions divided into two blocks, one from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET, and another from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET. “This is done to accommodate meeting participants in different time zones,” Gravallese, who is also Theodore Bevier Bayles Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of the division of rheumatology, inflammation and immunity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said in the interview. “All content will be available on demand following the live session so attendees can watch their choice of sessions at a later time.”
“Between educational time blocks, participants will have the opportunity to access community hubs, a concept that was piloted in 2019,” Swamy Venuturupalli, MD, FACR, chair of the Committee on Education with the ACR, told Healio Rheumatology.
For this year’s meeting, the ACR has significantly increased the number of community hubs, which are based on diseases and curated by an expert in the field, according to Venuturupalli, who is founder of Attune Health, attending physician in the division of rheumatology at Cedars Sinai Medical Center and associate clinical professor of medicine at UCLA.
“In addition to hosting popular sessions like study groups, the community hubs will also allow attendees to engage with experts and connect with peers who share the same research or clinical interests,” he said.
Gravallese assured attendees that the ACR has put significant effort into choosing a platform that best serves the college, its members and meeting viewers. “We have also attempted to learn what works and what does not work from meetings that have gone before ours,” she said.
While the format has changed, expectations for the quality of the presentations have not, according to Gravallese. That begins with the keynote address by Eric J. Rubin, MD, PhD, currently the editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.
“Dr. Rubin has been at the forefront of medical reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Gravallese said. “His keynote address will explore the interface between mechanisms that define infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and the impact of these diseases on the immune system.”
Rubin plans to review the key research currently being performed to unravel COVID-19 pathogenesis and treatment. “He will also discuss the ways in which medical communication can play a vital role in managing critically ill patients in the setting of a new disease for which our knowledge is still evolving rapidly,” Gravallese said.
In discussing Fauci’s address, Venuturupalli stressed the relevance of COVID-19 to the rheumatology community. “We expect the audience to benefit from the unique insights that Dr. Fauci has on the virus given his immunology background,” he said. “He plans to provide live, current updates on COVID-19 as they are playing out at the time of our meeting. In addition to Dr. Fauci’s lecture, we plan on having an entire track dedicated to COVID-19.”
Beyond COVID, Venuturupalli said that the goal of the ACR is to provide a meeting that connects and engages attendees with speakers and with one another.
In addition, each year the ACR hosts pre-meeting courses geared towards very specific audiences. “Usually these courses are dense in content and need prolonged attention for new skill acquisition,” Venuturupalli said. “Recognizing the fatigue resulting from staring at screens all day long, we decided to offer some of our pre-meeting courses after the meeting ends.”
The Review Course, the Practice Management & Coding Update and the Radiology Bootcamp will be held Nov. 10, while the Basic Research Conference will be held Nov. 21. Attendees are encouraged to look deep into the Convergence catalog to find other such offerings that may meet their CME or logistical needs.
For more information:
- Ellen M. Gravallese, MD, can be reached at Hale Building for Transformative Medicine, 6th Floor, Room 6002U, 60 Fenwood Road, Boston, MA 02115; email: education@rheumatology.org.
- Swamy Venuturupalli, MD, FACR, can be reached at 8750 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 350, Beverly Hills, CA. 90211; email: education@rheumatology.org.
- Additional information can be found at the ACR Convergence 2020 website.
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