Dear Colleagues,

We hope that you are staying safe and healthy during this unprecedented time. As the crisis continues we would like to thank all our members for your relentless work. Your efforts are appreciated for the care you deliver each day.

Same as other organizations, ISDP has faced significant challenges surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and many of you might have wondered about the future of the society. As the outbreak of COVID-19 has been unfolding worldwide, the ISDP Leadership has been closely monitoring its impact on our society and membership. At the beginning of March, after carefully weighing the emerging facts as well as the duties to our members, the ISDP has made the difficult, but necessary decision to cancel the 23rd Joint Meeting in Denver and roll over the agenda to the meeting scheduled for March 17-18, 2021 in San Francisco, California.  For similar reasons, the Organizing Committee for the XLI Symposium scheduled this fall in Cape Town has decided to postpone the meeting until 2021.

For the last 3 months society leadership and planning committee members have been working diligently on developing a plan to ensure that our society can thrive, fulfill our mission and serve the membership during these challenging and uncertain times. Following are some of the projects that are in progress.

• Capabilities for future virtual meetings: As it becomes clear that traveling might be restricted for the unforeseeable future, ISDP leadership is working on implementing virtual conferencing capabilities for future meetings of the society. Whether conditions will allow for traveling next year or social distancing will still be required, the ISDP will be able to organize a meeting, either completely virtual or a physical meeting with virtual streaming capabilities.
• On-line lectures: On the same venue, ISDP is planning to post online recorded conferences from the Joint Meeting that will be available for members. Other educational online content is also being evaluated.
• Virtual slide library: ISDP had already planned for the Self-Assessment course to go digital this year and started working on a digital slide library. We envision that in the near future a collection of interesting and educative cases will become available to the society membership.

These are some of the exciting projects that the society is working on. Perhaps there is also a silver lining to this unfortunate crisis. We are facing unprecedented challenges that have determined our society to look into innovative strategies that will likely benefit our members. Fortunately, ISDP is financially strong and in a good position to weather these unpredictable times. We are confident that will be able to come out better and stronger as a society after this crisis and continue to deliver the knowledge, research and expert insight that the members expect from us.

Warm regards,

Dr. Victor Prieto, President

Dr. Anjela Galan, Vice President

Dr. Joyce Lee, Secretary/Treasurer

International Society of Dermatopathology
P.O. Box 2444
Fredericksburg, TX 78624-2444
Phone: 650-729-1234
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.intsocdermpath.org

More Info and Travel Grant Application

Named in honor of long time society manager, Diana Baughman, the ISDP Visiting Scholar Awards provide financial assistance to deserving physicians from economically impoverished countries to acquire additional skills by training in dermatopathology in another country. 

More info on Visiting Scholar Award