Sections are required to hold a meeting, with or without educational programming, at Clinical Nutrition Week (CNW). This is a great opportunity for your Section to gather face-to-face and build relationships. This face-to-face opportunity is also a chance to share with your members the work of the Section and encourage them to get involved.
Sections may choose to host an educational meeting providing CE or a social or informational meeting; both are described here. Sections must submit a meeting proposal on or before September 15th the year prior to CNW. The proposals are then reviewed and approved by ASPEN staff and/or the Education and Professional Development Committee.
Section Meeting with Education
To obtain approval for Section Meetings at Clinical Nutrition Week that have an education program planned (guest speakers and presentations), ASPEN Sections must submit a Proposal for Educational Program on or before September 15. All proposals are reviewed by the Education and Professional Development (EPD) Committee, who then votes as to whether or not the program is accepted and can proceed as planned by the Section. All approved Section meetings will be eligible for continuing education (CE) credit.
Sections that do not submit a complete proposal on or before September 15 will not be permitted to have an educational program during the Section meeting at CNW. You will be notified by email of the Committee’s decision. All accepted proposals are subject to content revisions.
Two Important Notes:
- ASPEN prohibits programs that constitute commercial promotion. We fully comply with the 2004 ACCME Standards for Commercial Support of Continuing Medical Education.
- In your program proposal, you must identify an individual to serve as the program contact. This person is responsible for ensuring that program faculty submit materials in accordance with all deadlines, and will serve as the liaison between the ASPEN EPD Committee, ASPEN Director of Membership (national office), and the program faculty.
Proposal Review Process
The EPD Committee will evaluate each proposal according to the following criteria:
- Educational value of the session
- Timeliness of topic
- Applicability of content to practice
- Expertise of suggested faculty
- Appeal to a multidisciplinary audience (Discipline specific Section meetings may be excluded from this requirement if credit is sought only for a single discipline)
- Provision of multiple perspectives on a given topic
- Reflective of practice trends from around the country
- Ability of the session to meet a defined professional practice gap
Section Meeting without Education
We recognize that not all Section meetings will have an education component with guest speakers and presentations. ASPEN Sections that are not having an education program must provide still provide a summary on or before September 15 so staff can include necessary details in planning. Please use the Section Meeting Without an Educational Program form.
Some examples of successful programming include:
- Section chair facilitating a discussion of the current issues facing practitioners in the Section;
- Speed Networking-- there are several ways to set this up with the purpose of helping members meet each other;
- Panel Discussion with members sharing insight or information on a given topic with time for Q&A;
- What I’m Reading– a selected group of members comes prepared to give short descriptions and insight from books, articles or other reading materials; designed as a readers forum;
- Open discussion of recently published research in a journal club format.