March for Science and AAPA (UPDATE)

As most of you already know, there is a March for Science being held in Washington, DC on Saturday, April 22 in order to celebrate science and to issue a call to support and safeguard the scientific community and the scientific process. A parallel march is being organized in New Orleans, which will begin at 1 pm (CDT) at Duncan Park/City Hall Plaza. This will be the last day of the AAPA meeting. Since so many of our members want to attend the march and because we as the Association’s officers believe this march is critically important to AAPA and the scientific community, we have been working to find a way to keep the structure and programming for AAPA, while allowing conference attendees to attend the march. We’ve also been coordinating with the march organizers.

So, in consultation with this year’s plenary speaker we have decided to cancel the plenary talk (and will reschedule the speaker–Tony DiFiore–for next year’s meeting) and instead we will convene at 12:30 in the conference hotel where the two presidents–outgoing president Susan Antón and incoming president Leslie Aiello–will give brief remarks to attendees and the press. The presidents and officers will then be joined by members of the AAPA Executive Committee and we will lead a procession of conference attendees (whoever wants to join us!) the 8 blocks to the start of the march. AAPA programming will resume as regularly scheduled at 2:30 with podium and poster sessions and the Presidential Panel.