Pulse of PACES (POP) #4
Summer Newsletter, 2024
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Hello!
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The Latin word communicare (from where the word communication is born) means “to make common” – i.e. make knowledge common. The stem is the same as that used in the word community. This makes sense as in many ways, communication is the foundation of community.
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With this, we welcome you to the re-invigorated PACES Newsletter, the Pulse of PACES or “POP 4”. Our hope is that we can communicate better, but not as a goal itself, but rather as a means to build community.
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Message from the President
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Another PACES Business Dinner is in the books, and with it, we are welcoming 2 new members to the Executive Committee—our new VP of Finance, Kara Motonaga and our new EC International Member, Sabrina Tsao. In addition, we thank Tess Saarel for her 5 years of service on the PACES EC—she has given so much to PACES and we are grateful for all her efforts. Personally, I want to thank Tess for her guidance and mentorship as I learned the financial workings of PACES. Thank you!
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Plans for HRS 2025 in San Diego are already underway. We are working with the local team in San Diego to create another memorable event, both for a PACES pre-HRS event and for our Business Dinner. In addition, based on the feedback from people at HRS 2024, we are working on a Committee refresh. Please know we will be reaching out to Committee Chairs and Vice Chairs to understand the current committee members, as well as succession planning for the Committee.
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Lastly, we welcome feedback! Please do not hesitate to reach out to any of us with any questions or thoughts as they arise.
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Upcoming Events
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Awards & Accolades
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There were several awards announced at the recent PACES business meeting, including young investigator awards, research awards, service awards, and Lifetime Achievement awards. Congratulations to all the recent award recipients! Inspirational to say the least.
PACES Lifetime Achievement Award – Dr. Ed Walsh:
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PACES International Travel Award – Dr. Muhammad Mohsin:
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PACES Abstract YIA – Christian Egly, PhD
High-throughput screen identifies evacetrapib as candidate drug to treat LQTS type 2:
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Paul Gillette Grant Award – Zhanlin (Flynn) Chen
(Mentor: Greg Webster, MD)
Age-based associations of atrial fibrillation: clinical, monogenic and polygenic predictors:
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SADS Basic Science YIA – Chantal J.M. van Opbergen, PhD
(Sponsors: Mario Delmar, MD PhD & Marina Cerrone, MD)
AAV-Mediated Delivery of Plakophilin-2a Arrests Progression of Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy in Murine Hearts: Preclinical Evidence Supporting Gene Therapy in Humans:
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SADS Clinical/Translational YIA – Sahej Bains, BS
(Sponsor: Michael Ackerman, MD PhD)
AAV9-Mediated KCNQl-Suppression-Replacement Gene Therapy in Transgenic Rabbits with Long QT Syndrome Type 1:
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Research Update
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We held our first in-person PACES Research Meeting in 5 years. The meeting took place at Boston Children’s and was highlighted by 22 presentations. The turnout was excellent with more than 130 attendees and standing room only “seating.” The Research Meeting was followed the next day by recognizing our award winners for the following achievements: Paul Gillette Grant (Flynn Chen), SADS Basic Science (Chantal van Opbergen) and Translational Science Award (Sahej Bains), and our first ever PACES Young Investigator Award (Christian Egly) which was co-sponsored by HRS. The submissions this year were all spectacular and certainly deserving of recognition. The PACES Research Committee has been busy reviewing new PACES protocols. Please stay tuned with all the latest research updates with our email blasts and by visiting https://www.pacesep.org/research-publications.
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Administrative & Advocacy Update
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Greetings from your VP of Administration!
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We have been hard at work with our update of the PACES Mission Statement, developing our Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee, and with our membership and website updates. The PACES Job posting section of the website has been considerably cleaned up, and we have created a process to ensure that job opportunities there are current. These postings will now expire after 6 months unless renewed, so that everyone knows what's currently available.
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We presented the updated PACES Mission Statement at the business meeting, and are sharing it again here. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me.
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PACES Mission Statement
We are a non-profit, international organization of diverse healthcare professionals dedicated to enhancing the care of the patients and families we serve. This includes children and young adults with cardiac rhythm disturbances and individuals of any age with congenital heart disease and arrhythmias.
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Our mission is to foster high-quality collaborative research and exchange ideas on topics relevant to our patient populations, as well as representing our members on education, health care policy and advocacy initiatives. We aim to create a space where every individual feels valued, respected, and embraced. Our leaders and membership will embody the full spectrum of our community and champion our principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in advancing the field of pediatric and congenital electrophysiology.
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Membership Update
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Membership renewals will be coming on January 1st based on the annual dues structure. The membership committee has worked with the EC on the fee structure for international members and has recommended the following change to international dues: 1) increase high Income OECD countries from $100 to $150, and 2) decrease Mid to Low income OECD countries from $100 to $50.
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We are planning on having automated emails go out with membership renewals, to keep people abreast of opportunities within PACES and other benefits of belonging to PACES.
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Lastly, we will continue to work through membership rosters to ensure accuracy of types of membership (trainee, regular, allied professional).
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If you are interested in joining the membership committee, please email Gaurav Arora at Gaurav.arora@chp.edu.
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Finance Update
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I am honored to join the Executive Committee and serve our PACES community as VP of Finance! Thank you all for your support!
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We had a successful PACES Business Dinner at HRS 2024 held at the New England Aquarium in Boston. Thank you to all of our PACES members who generously donated a total of $2,225 to our Gift Matching Campaign at the Business Dinner. We would also like to thank AlthaThera Pharmaceuticals for sponsoring our Business Dinner and for graciously matching our contribution with another $2,225 for a grand total of $4,450 raised at the Business Dinner.
Our current PACES account balance is: $141,353.88
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The Finance Committee will be meeting in August/September to set our PACES budget for the next fiscal year. If you are interested in joining the Finance Committee, please email me at kmotonaga@stanford.edu. All are welcome!
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QI Update
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The PACES QI committee continues to stay busy, with a variety of exciting projects and endeavors in progress or on the horizon:
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- The Remote Transmission QI project led by Drs. Aarti Dalal and Bradley Clark published their baseline data in Pediatric Cardiology in December 2023. Participating centers (22 in total!) are submitting their post-intervention data for a follow-up manuscript.
- We continue to work hard on the IMPACT registry. The CIED module is almost ready for public comment, with the new EP modules soon to follow. We encourage everyone in the PACES community to participate in the public comment period so that the registry can be a source of research and QI meaningful to your practice.
- The committee has spent the last few months generating ideas for our next PACES QI project. We are excited that the APPs will be working on methods to improve EP lab efficiency (thank you, Melissa Olen and Brynn Dechert-Crooks!). Be on the lookout for future updates on this exciting project.
- We are partnering with the new PACES JEDI committee and will be developing projects that will look at both DEI and QI issues.
If you’re interested in any of these cool projects, we’re always happy to include new members. Please contact Doug or Ronn so we can add you to our distribution list!
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Mentorship Update
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As presented at the business meeting, the Emerging Leaders group and the Executive Committee will be starting a mentorship initiative through PACES. The 1st session will be a speed mentoring session and we expect it to occur in the early Autumn. Early career members should keep their eyes open for email communications regarding involvement. We look forward to starting this great program.
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International Update
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With the help of the website team, the international discussion forum was established. We are looking forward to robust conversation on this platform. Additionally, the membership committee has worked with the EC on the fee structure for international members (please see above).
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Get to Know PACES (coming soon)
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Member highlights and “get to know your colleagues” section coming soon. Let’s build community.
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Thank You!
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PACES newsletter committee:
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