As you probably all know by now, the past months have changed the preparations for the 17th World Congress of the WAIMH in Brisbane, Australia originally scheduled for June 2020. From January on, the busy preparations for the upcoming congress changed to a discussion on how to cope with the new situation caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. In the present situation, the best option turned out to be to postpone the Brisbane congress to June 2021. This gives us time to see what the possibilities will be for organizing the next world congress.
The good side is that all the hard work done by the Local Organizing Committee, Program Committee and the Professional Congress Organizer will not be in vain, as we prepare for holding the Congress in 2021.
At the end of last year, the reviewers did a fantastic job by reviewing all the abstracts submitted for the Brisbane congress, and we wish to extend our warmest thanks to all our reviewers. With the help of the reviewers’ work, the Program Committee and the Local Organizing committee put together an interesting Congress program. This program will wait for us, together with new contributions submitted through the upcoming additional call for papers for Brisbane 2021.
This year instead of meeting in person, the WAIMH will organize three interesting webinars for WAIMH members and registrants for the 17th WAIMH World Congress. Keeping Infant Mental Health in Focus in Times of Crisis webinars will be held online on the 10th, 11th and 17th of June 2020. The webinars will be recorded, so that they can be retrieved later on the WAIMH website and WAIMH YouTube channel. You are warmly invited to join the WAIMH webinars!
Let us hope that we can all participate in the Brisbane 2021 congress, hear interesting presentations, meet each other and share the wonderful atmosphere of WAIMH congresses.
Reija Latva
Associate Executive Director
Authors
Reija Latva, MD, PhD
Associate Executive Director, WAIMH
