What does it mean to “move the needle”? In thinking about the theme for the 2025 ACPM annual conference, the planning committee and ACPM leadership settled on “Moving the Needle for Preventive Medicine and Public Health”. This phrase is a play on words meant not only to immediately evoke Seattle’s famous Space Needle as a recognizable landmark that also serves as a fitting image for the logo of the conference, but more importantly, it connotes the need for change and for actions to drive such changes. Preventive Medicine (PM) specialists are certainly no strangers to both needs: as the medical specialty that bridges between the house of medicine and the house of public health (PH), we are constantly working to promote and protect health, and to prevent disease, disability and premature death for populations as well as the social groups and individuals within them. At the same time, we must also work on moving the needle for the specialty of PM and the profession of PH writ large, because many unresolved issues have long plagued us. Some of the often-cited ones include: a lack of recognition of the identity of PM specialists both among other health professionals and the public; challenges with the branding of the PM specialty; insufficient funding for training the next generation of PM and PH professionals and for implementing PH policies optimally; and societal resistance to PH interventions due to misinformation, disinformation, and inadequate health literacy. We are also facing challenges that add compounding difficulty to our work and to the lives of those we care for, including environmental factors (e.g., emerging infectious diseases, and climate change) and social factors (e.g., on-going disparities in care access and care quality for different population subgroups, and social discrimination against those subgroups).
While we must celebrate the successes in making a difference in those areas, there is still tremendous work to be done. This year’s conference seeks to shed light on the initiatives that have been undertaken or are now taking place to truly drive change in both of those areas mentioned above. At PM2025, we want to know about what has worked well, how it was done, what challenges were present and how they were overcome, and how the lives of individuals and populations, including the lives and practice of PM specialists, have been improved or could be improved by the proposed interventions. I encourage everyone to be bold and brave in their work of moving the needle for PM and PH, while also retaining the necessary scientific and scholarly rigor. We also hope to make PM2025 a successful and fun event, and we will be implementing many new initiatives to that end, including appointing various engagement liaisons (regarding technology, social events, membership, and sponsorship) and implementing novel aspects (e.g., more lightning rounds oral presentations, pre-conference workshop didactics as enduring materials, and more).See you all in Seattle May 4-8, 2025!
Yuri Jadotte, MD, PhD, MPH, FACPM
Chair, PM2025 Conference Planning Committee