55th Annual Meeting
ACADEMY OF PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE

November 19–22, 2008
InterContinental Miami, Miami, Florida

2008 INVITED SPEAKERS

The following invited experts have agreed to participate as plenary speakers at APM's 2008 Annual Meeting:

• Professor Sir Michael Rutter
• Linda Fried, MD, MPH
• James C. Harris, MD
• David A. Mrazek, MD, FRCPsych
• Richard D. Lane, MD, PhD
• Philip S. Wang, MD, DrPH

 Professor Sir Michael Rutter
Professor Sir Michael Rutter will give the Keynote Lecture at the opening session on Thursday titled Gene-Environment Interdependence. He is professor of developmental psychopathology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London.

A child psychiatrist, Professor Rutter's research has included the genetics of autism and antisocial behavior, and the study of both school and family influences on children's behavior. Professor Rutter also has a special interest in the interplay between genetic and psychosocial risk factors. He was Deputy Chairman of the Wellcome Trust from 1999 to 2004. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1987 and was a Founding Fellow of the Academia Europaea and the Academy of Medical Sciences, of which he is now clinical vice president. He has received numerous international honors and has published some 40 books and over 400 scientific papers and chapters.

 Linda Fried, MD, MPH
Linda Fried, MD, MPH will speak on Frailty on Thursday afternoon. She is Dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

Dr. Freid's core research interests are prevention and health promotion for older adults, with emphasis on the causes and prevention of frailty and disability and their prevention. Dr. Fried is the principal investigator of major population-based research projects, including: 1) the Women's Health and Aging Studies I, II, and III, which are dedicated to determining the causes and consequences of disability and frailty in older women; 2) the Cardiovascular Health Study, a multicenter prospective observational study of the causes and consequences of cardiovascular diseases in older men and women; 3) the Experience Corps program, a community-based program designed to bring the skills and time of older adults into public elementary schools to improve the educational outcomes for the children, while also being a health promotion program for the older adults; 4) the GEM (Gingko Evaluation for Memory) randomized, controlled trial to determine whether gingko biloba prevents dementia and cognitive decline in older adults; and 5) the Johns Hopkins Older Americans Independence Center, a medical institution-wide, multidisciplinary initiative to discover the causes of frailty in older adults. She has published numerous articles on the causes and consequences of frailty and disability with aging and on both clinical and population-based strategies for prevention for older adults. She is the recipient of a National Institute on Aging MERIT Award, as well as numerous awards for her research accomplishments and her mentoring and is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

 James C. Harris, MD
James C. Harris, MD will give a presentation on Developmental Neuropsychiatry on Friday morning. He is the director of the Developmental Neuropsychiatry Clinic, and a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Pediatrics, and Mental Hygiene, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Harris single-authored a textbook written to establish Developmental Neuropsychiatry as a subspecialty in psychiatry. The book Developmental Neuropsychiatry (2 volumes) was chosen as medical book of the year among 2500 medical books in 76 specialties in the year of publication (1998). He also single-authored the book Intellectual Disability: Understanding Its Development, Causes, Classification, Evaluation and Treatment and has championed caring for patients with intellectual disability. His research focus is on behavioral phenotypes in neurogenetic disorders such as Lesch-Nyhan disease.

He is the cover editor for the Archives of General Psychiatry for the Art and Images section; he chooses the cover each month and writes a commentary about a psychiatric theme represented in this work. We have asked Dr. Harris to discuss the fascinating stories behind the journal covers in an informal talk on Friday evening for those with an interest in art and psychiatry.

 David A. Mrazek, MD, FRCPsych
David A. Mrazek, MD, FRCPsych will present Applications of Psychiatric Genomics in Psychosomatic Medicine on Friday afternoon. He is professor of psychiatry, psychology, and pediatrics, and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota.

Dr. Mrazek’s early research interests focused on the emotional development of the physically ill child, particularly the impact of severe, life-threatening asthma on the development of affected children and families. Subsequently, Dr. Mrazek examined the effects of stress on susceptibility to asthma in genetically vulnerable infants and conducted the first randomized controlled trial comparing the relative effects of an educational intervention compared to dietary counseling and compared to a psychologically oriented home intervention in an at-risk population. He has published over 100 papers and chapters and won numerous awards for his prevention work. His current research focus includes psychiatric pharmacogenomics and genomics of affective disorders, addiction, and other psychiatric diseases.

 Richard D. Lane, MD, PhD
Richard D. Lane, MD, PhD will speak on Applications of Neuroimaging in Psychosomatic Medicine on Saturday morning. He is professor of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience and associate director of the General Clinical Research Center at Arizona Health Science Center.

Dr. Lane is a clinical psychiatrist with a PhD in experimental psychology. He is on the editorial board of Psychosomatic Medicine and is secretary-treasurer of the American Psychosomatic Society. His research interests include the functional neuroanatomy of emotion, emotional experience, and emotion regulation, the physiological mechanisms by which emotions trigger life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, and the psychology and psychophysiology of individual differences in emotional experience and expression. Dr. Lane has shared his insights with us before and we look forward to hearing about his latest work.

 Philip S. Wang, MD, DrPH
Philip S. Wang, MD, DrPH will speak on Evidence-Based Treatment and Methodologies Relevant for Psychosomatic Medicine on Saturday morning. He is director of the Division of Services and Intervention Research, at the National Institute of Mental Health, and on leave from his faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, where he completed his undergraduate, medical school, psychiatry residency, as well as doctoral training in epidemiology.

Dr. Wang's research has focused on three areas: psychopharmacoepidemiology, psychopharmacoeconomics, and mental health services research. He was the principal investigator of the NIMH-sponsored Work Outcomes Research and Cost-effectiveness Study (WORCS), a large-scale trial to examine the return-on-investment of enhanced depression care for workers. Dr. Wang has served as a voting member on the FDA Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, FDA Neurological Devices Panel, and FDA Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee. He also served on the NIMH Services Research and Clinical Epidemiology Study Section. He is currently chair of the WHO World Mental Health Study Services Research Work Group. He is a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-V Task Force and has consulted on several APA work groups to develop evidence-based treatment guidelines. Dr. Wang is an author of approximately 130 scientific publications. His questions and methodologies are highly relevant to psychosomatic medicine.

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