Program Format

Plenary Sessions

There will be three Congress tracks: clinical, research, and policy. Each track has multiple sessions. The program of each congress session includes state of the art lectures providing a review of available data. The lectures will be followed by an interactive expert panel discussion as well as Q&A time with the audience. The panel debates are the signature feature of this congress and will provide an opportunity for interactive discussions.

Breakout Sessions (Tuesday evening, March 29th)

The Faculty and audience will divide into separate rooms for each of the three tracks. Faculty designates will lead with a prepared selection of evidence based topics and potential conclusions that are designed to capture the consensus of session participants. An electronic voting system will be used to measure the degree from the audience of support for stated conclusions.

Conclusive Plenary Session (Wednesday, March 30th)

A summary of the conclusions of the three breakout sessions will be presented by a Faculty representative in the final plenary session of the congress. This process will ultimately generate an executive summary of the main congress outcomes.

After the Congress

Shortly after the New York meeting, a dedicated Writing Committee will draft a document detailing the outcomes of the Conclusive Plenary Session. Its aim and content is not to generate new clinical guidelines, but to highlight the most important messages from the World Congress. Inevitably, it will indicate areas of research that should receive priority and call to action appropriate policy changes. This will be submitted to a relevant medical journal for publication as a white paper.