I’ve been a big fan of Don Moore, PhD, professor of Medical Education and Administration and director of Continuing Medical Education at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, since I met him at the first CME Leadership conference held back in the early 00s. I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with him often, but when I have, he has never failed to fill my mind with all kinds of thoughts on not just on CME, but everything to do with human learning (and teaching).

So I was beyond thrilled to learn the Alliance for Continuing Medical Education has awarded him the 2010 Distinguished Service Award (thanks to Floyd Pennington for the pointer). Congratulations, Dr. Moore.

Beginning February 15, look for highlights from this year’s Alliance for CME meeting to hit the airwaves on XM Radio 160, thanks to a partnership between ACME and ReachMD. I knew Lawrence Sherman (senior vice president, Educational Strategy at Prova Education, an affiliate of Omnia Education and a regular columnist for Medical Meetings) was doing a series of interviews because I saw his tweets about them — and soon I’ll be able to listen in. Here’s the lineup:

· Jann Balmer, PhD, President of the Alliance for Continuing Medical Education and Director of CME at the University of Virginia School of Medicine

· Alejandro Aparicio, MD, Director, Division of Continuing Physician Professional Development, American Medical Association

· Don Detmer, MD, MA, President and chief Executive Officer, American Medical Informatics Association

· George Mejicano, MD, Associate Dean for Continuing Professional Development, University of Wisconsin, School of Medicine and Public Health

· Dave Davis, MD, Senior Director, Academic Affairs, Association of American Medical Colleges

· Maureen Doyle-Scharff, MBA FACME – Senior Director, Team Lead, Medical Education Group - Pfizer

· Joseph Kim, MD, MPH – Physician, technologist

Half will be featured on the week of the 15th, the other half the week of Feb. 22. Looking forward to it!

Bet I’m not the only one who has been eagerly awaiting the session handouts from this year’s conference being posted to the Alliance for CME Web site. Well, now they’re up, and available to all paid registrants of the meeting.

Thanks to the presenters for sharing their PowerPoints, and to the Alliance staff for shepherding all those PowerPoints to their proper place for downloading.

Debra Gist has a cool post about a poster she saw at the Alliance meeting about a system that lets physicians get credit for searching the Internet. I missed that one — definitely worth checking out.

If you are interested in presenting at next year’s Alliance for Continuing Medical Education Annual Conference (January 26-29, 2011, at the San Francisco Marriott), don’t wait to get started on your educational abstract. The deadline to submit your complete abstract is March 19.

Here’s the call for abstracts link, and you can submit it online.

I don’t think it’d be possible to beat this year’s lineup, but I urge you to go ahead and try!

Just saw this notice in the latest NIQIE e-newsletter and thought I’d spread the word:

The Certificate in Continuous Performance Improvement Program sponsored by NIQIE and the Jefferson School of Population Health (JSPH) will officially launch with the first three modules presented in a four-hour live workshop format Sunday, February 28, 2010, 1-5 p.m. at the Philadelphia Marriott. The workshop is scheduled immediately prior to Jefferson’s annual Population Health and Disease Management Colloquium. More info here.

Just got a press release announcing the North American Association of Medical Education and Communication Companies‘ new officers and board members, who took their new positions at the American Medical Association’s Task Force on Industry/Provider Collaboration, held in Baltimore last week.

The New NAAMECC Board Officers are:

President: Sandra Weaver, MS

President Elect: Chris Bolwell, BSc

Past President: Stephen M. Lewis, MA, CCMEP

Treasurer: Linda Coogle, MBA, CCMEP

Newly elected NAAMECC Board Members are:

Kurt Boyce

Lea Ann Hansen, PharmD

Joseph Kim, MD, MPH

I’m off at a disgustingly early hour tomorrow to go to Chicago for the NIQIE conference. I was looking over the attendee list today and saw a few familiar names, so hopefully even having been out of the CME world for a few years, I won’t feel completely at sea.

Oh, who am I kidding? I always did find continuous performance improvement a difficult concept to grasp, at least in its details. Wish I could have made the pre-conference basics workshop, which was held today, but I had to get the magazine out first–mission accomplished, finally! But an overview would have been a good way to start it all off.

I hope to be able to post some news and updates from the conference, so stay tuned…

American Medical Association President J. James Rohack, MD, has launched a blog called On the Road with Dr. Rohack. According to a press release, the idea is to “chronicle his thoughts on health care in America, discuss the leading issues affecting patients and physicians and share with readers his front-row view of the evolving health-reform debate.”

The AMA is really getting into this social media thing: This spring it also launched a profile page on Twitter, @AmerMedicalAssn.