JAMA, NEJM editors lead forums on pulmonary medicine, critical care

Editors from two of medicine’s most respected journals —the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)—will share their insights during two ATS International Conference forums.

Jeffrey M. Drazen, MD, NEJM editor-in-chief, and Howard Bauchner, MD, JAMA editor-in-chief, will moderate the Sunday, May 20 forum, which will focus on pulmonary medicine. Dr. Drazen and Phil B. Fontanarosa, MD, MBA, JAMA executive editor, will present the Monday, May 21 forum, which will highlight critical care. In all, the forums will include 12 oral presentations by the authors of material that will be published to coincide with the presentations.

Dr. Drazen and Derek C. Angus, MD, MPH, JAMA contributing editor for care of the critically ill, developed the programs.

“Dr. Drazen and I think the ATS is an incredibly important professional society that safeguards much of the science and clinical practice of pulmonary and critical medicine,” says Dr. Angus, professor and chair of critical care medicine and director of the Clinical Research, Investigation, and Systems Modeling of Acute Illnesses Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

While the journals receive thousands of submissions each year, together they have a 4.5 percent acceptance rate and publish about 400 research papers.

“We’re going to select papers for the forums that we think are most important and relevant to the pulmonary and critical care community,” says Dr. Drazen, distinguished Parker B. Francis professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, professor of physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Each of the speakers will give a short research presentation, which will be followed by analysis by one of the editors. They will discuss the questions they posed to the authors and the importance of the papers.

Dr. Drazen encourages attendees to ask questions. “We want them to come, listen, and hear what was on the editor’s mind,” Dr. Drazen says. “I hope there will be some brisk discussion from the floor.”