Dec. 2009
Vol. 1, #4

Dear SFP members,

It is a great honor for me to serve as your president. I feel that I have huge shoes to fill, following Mitch Creinin and Phillip Darney as our first two presidents. I pledge to work hard for the society over the next two years.

I was quite pleased with our annual meeting held in conjunction with the Reproductive Health ’09 conference in Los Angeles this September. We partnered with ARHP and PPFA to organize the meeting, and led the scientific portion of the agenda. The scientific sessions were well-attended and packed with cutting-edge clinical and scientific work. The interactions of attendees and presenters was lively and stimulating.

The Board of Directors is planning a retreat in Philadelphia in February to review the activities of the recent past to plan for the future. We will closely review the finances of the society, discuss the grant application process and further develop plans for the next annual meeting.

I want to share my goals for the next two years. I hope to increase SFP’s visibility as the leading scientific professional organization in family planning by:

Expanding the scientific portion of the annual meeting with more time devoted to oral abstracts and poster presentations.
Increasing the number of SFP Clinical Guidelines published in Contraception.
Working with our funders to expand the size and number of grants for family planning research, particularly in difficult to fund areas such as abortion.

I also hope to expand SFP’s influence by:

Increasing the size of our society by increasing membership among social scientists and among family planning scientists internationally.
Planning ahead for a separate and distinct annual meeting when the size of our society warrants it.
Increasing the society’s role in mentoring for developing scientists.

Sincerely,

Mark Nichols, MD
President, SFP Board of Directors

P.S. Additional notes from Susan:

	Make a tax-deductible donation to SFP before the end of the year! Thanks for your consideration.
	If you didn’t already follow Mark’s link to the annual meeting page, don’t miss it: It contains photos as well as a summary. And note that the next conference will be held September 22-25, 2010 in Atlanta—and we’ve just selected Austin, Texas as the site for the 2011 conference, now scheduled for October 3-7, 2011.
	The next SFP grant cycle will begin on February 1, when online proposal submissions begin. (We’ll post the link on SFP’s home page then.)
	Talking about grants, we’ve been adding to our grant opportunities page—and we’ve also recently added new pages on research collaborations and on educational opportunities. Don’t miss them—and don’t hesitate to let us know if you have other material you’d like to see on the site.