Annual Meeting News

Hello, SAHM Colleagues!  

It was wonderful to see so many in Chicago and thanks to Nicholas Westers, Chinwe Efuribe, Kellen Company and the entire program planning team for such a great conference! I have big shoes to fill as the Director of Programs for 2024! I am grateful that Chinwe is staying on as Associate Director of Programs to show me the ropes.

Believe it or not, the 2024 conference planning has been underway for months! SAHM President Manuel Oscos-Sanchez has been incredibly supportive as we jumped into planning last fall. You may know, Manuel is not only president of SAHM, but is also a physician and social science researcher who has an impressive list of publications looking at concepts such as structure and agency. Truth be told, when he began talking about this to me, I was not sure what he meant! But, he quickly caught me up to speed and helped mold the theme for the upcoming conference: Maximizing Adolescent and Young Adult Health through Structure and Agency.  

When I think about these concepts, there is little doubt that this is a fitting theme for the times we are experiencing as professionals, as parents, as advocates, as allies. As we received feedback from you all on this theme it became evident that the concepts of structure and agency mean different things to different people in different communities. Furthermore, it is important that we think about structure and agency outside of the confines of U.S. structures and it is important to the planning team that we acknowledge and represent all our colleagues residing within AND outside the United States. You will see the theme banner on the SAHM landing page in various languages throughout the year as we lead up to 2024.  

As we gear up to offer great clinical, research, training and networking opportunities at the annual meeting, we want to remind you that all recorded sessions from the 2023 Conference are available on the Whova App for the rest of the year. As a reminder, only sessions held in the general session room were recorded.

If you missed the conference but still want the learning, stay tuned to SAHM emails as there will be an option to register for On Demand Access forthcoming. Also, watch for the Call for Proposals in June. We had more than 350 submissions last year and we expect to exceed that for 2024. While the proposal scoring rubric no longer includes ties to the conference theme, we want to hear from you as we lead up to the conference in San Diego!

If you have thoughts on structure and agency, let us know by email. We can’t wait to see you all again.