Those of us who were fortunate to attend AADE 15 in New Orleans had a great experience.
There was much to learn, many people with which to network, and much fun to be had in the Big Easy!! (and the food - wow - good thing it is an easily walkable city!! :)...
A major theme of AADE 15 was technology, diabetes community outreach, and advocacy. There were many sessions on The DOC (Diabetes Online Community) and use of Social Media for Advocacy and Community Outreach.
My favorite sessions were on Culinary Medicine, Featuring Tulane University's Goldring Institute: An inovative program that incorporates healthy cooking into the Tulane Med School curriculum and also provides healthy teaching classes free of charge to the community:
http://tmedweb.tulane.edu/mu/teachingkitchen/
This session was packed, in fact a second lecture hall was opened in the convention center to accomodate the overflow. My organization is affiliated with a medical school and I have approached the medical school and suggested they look into establishing a similar program locally (the Goldring Institute licenses its curriculum to other medical schools).
My other favorite session was on disaster preparedness - in which several survivors of Hurricane Katrina gave very compelling accounts of their experience and the importance of being prepared. My LNG members who were present decided that this topic would be an excellent topic for one of our upcoming meetings, and we plan to work on this.
I feel fortunate to be one of the 3 recipients of the Ginger Kanzer-Lewis NYCB Scholarship award that helped fund my AAD15 experience, along with Joanne Green (LHV LNG) and Lucille Hughes (Metro LNG).
Thank you to the NYS CB for establishing this scholarship in memory of Ginger.