Dear IAMA Members and Colleagues:

It is my sincere pleasure to accept the assignment of President of IAMA by your votes as of July 2008. It is a great honor to work for you and to serve IAMA to the best of my ability for the next two years. Allow me to raise my hat and pay my humble respect to the Founders of IAMA since its establishment in 1993, almost 15 years ago. I praise the founders, previous presidents, board members and trustees, who with their tremendous perseverance and dedication started and continued this outstanding and honorable association. I am proud to be part of it and with your help and support I promise not to let your association down.

IAMA has achieved many aspects and goals of an educational, charitable and cultural organization so far.  IAMA educates the members with the latest medical knowledge in the annual CME conferences. Through these lectures we witness and observe brilliant young physicians which all of us are proud to see them functioning in different medical specialties. I am observing the great achievements of many of our young Iranian physician in the past several years, and again I am proud of them.  IAMA also, has been very active in educating Iranian physicians by lecturing in the Universities of Mashad and Kerman, in Iran. With the reputation of IAMA, we have been instrumental in recommending several Iranian physicians to attend our American Universities to be exposed to the latest didactic and scientific medical knowledge, such as HIV disease, drug addictions, Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), organ transplant and the most recent and advanced medical skills. This has been furnished free of charge to Iranian physicians through The ASPEN FOUNDATION. I have to also mention that because of that, at the present time there is ACLS Courses in the University of Mashad that trains and certifies the Iranian physicians, for this branch of medicine. Our IAMA members who are in the position of being a faculty member in different American Medical Schools can say for sure that they exposed and introduced some of the most brilliant and genius Iranian students to the medical schools and residency programs. Some of our members were instrumental to find jobs and location of business for some other Iranian physicians. In the past we occasionally helped needy medical students by mitigating their financial difficulties.

IAMA Bulletin, which has been sent to many, as much as almost 5000 Iranian Medical and affiliated specialties, works as a symbol of identity and recognition, for IAMA. It facilitates the connections among the old and new members. Although the IAMA Bulletin’s production is costly for the association and cumbersome for its editors, it is the symbol and identity of IAMA. I believe that, the continuation of publishing, the BULLETIN must be preserved.

The IAMA website www.iama.org, is a fast route of connecting with IAMA. I believe that, it is still being improved, but we are working on that to make it more practical and usable.  I have the pleasure to announce that with the help of Dr. Omid Zad, one of our young and brilliant members as our volunteer web master, the web site will be improved and desirable soon. Many thanks and appreciations to Drs. Omid Zad, Shahriar Bozorgzad and Mohammad Shokouh-Amiri for their dedication and outstanding contribution to IAMA website.

In the area of charity, IAMA helped to start an out patient medical center for, BAM, earthquake victims in BAM Iran. The main building of the medical center is almost completed.  It is directed by the supervision and the help of its boards, which are in close contact with the Kerman Medical School in Iran.

IAMA-JAVAAN Chapter deserves lots of credit as they open another new frontier to the association. Through IAMA- JAVAAN we believe that the torch will continue. These young members are invaluable assets to IAMA. They are the main connection to the future members. Thanks for their contribution to IAMA. We are proud of their achievements.

We have come a long journey but we have a lot to go. IAMA founders, board members, and trustees have dedicated their time and effort to IAMA without stipend and reimbursement so far. Many IAMA members help us with generous donations. Many members gave us their guidance and helped us with their valuable advice. IAMA annual CME courses have been done for the past years by Dr. Kamran Tabbador through Albert Einstein University, in New York and for the last two years by Dr. Fredrick Ellyin through Rosalind Franklin University in Chicago. Our speakers in the CME have donated their time, transportation and lodging expenses without any charges to IAMA. I humbly extend my many thanks and gratitude to them. Their contribution to IAMA is priceless and outstanding.

Finally, many thanks to our past president Dr. Moshirpur and her board members. They were dedicated and worked hard in the past four years. I gracefully thank Dr. Ganchi for the tenacious and everlasting endurance to continue his hard work daily without interruption as the founder, past president and the chairman of board of trustees. I extend my appreciation to the Director and the editors of the IAMA Bulletin for many days and hours of hard work for editing and publishing the BULLETIN. These people make me so humble and thankful. Their generosity to IAMA is outstanding and beyond description.

We know that we are not flawless, and understand that running the association in a fair and democratic way is a difficult task. We have to listen to the different ideas and even be ready to be criticized for whatever decision we make. We accept this as part of the growth and maturity. Please inform us with your ideas and suggestions. IAMA Board of Directors welcomes your ideas. We will try to use them as much as possible, as long as they are in line with our BY-LAWS, which we are obliged to follow.

The strength of IAMA is in your hands. Without your membership and help we cannot survive. At this time I extend my hand to accept your help. I appreciate your pledge of continuous membership and support. I may ask you to spread the goals of IAMA among your non- member friends, to convince a friend to join the membership, or may ask you to sponsor a medical student to the IAMA annual meeting. Next year’s annual meeting will be held in Boston, Massachusetts. Please influence the pharmaceutical companies to donate to our annual CME meeting and to put an advertisement in The IAMA BULLETIN to mitigate its cost of publishing.

Remember together we will be stronger and more effective toward our goals.

Sincerely,

Barry Sadegi, MD
IAMA President
August 13, 2008