Earlier this month, AFP held its annual editorial board meeting at the AAFP headquarters in Leawood, Kan. It's a compressed two-day event that offers AFP's editors a chance to mingle and let ideas cross-pollinate. We were particularly pleased with the achievements of this year's gathering, which brought quite an array of participants together, including medical and professional editors, Web site coordinators, marketing and publishing staff, as well as others.

The week of the editorial board meeting started off with a visit from AFP's newest editorial fellow, Sumi Makkar, M.D. Although she was only recently installed in this position, Dr. Makkar has been affiliated with AFP for the past four years during her role as resident representative to the editorial advisory board and as editor of the “Resident and Student Voice” feature in the journal. During a three-day orientation with Dr. Makkar, we quickly learned that her previous editorial experience and tenacious grip on detail have well equipped her for this new role—and a productive week was spent in information sharing and editorial planning.

Later in the week at the editorial board meeting, Dr. Makkar introduced us to the new resident and student representatives to the editorial board, Jennifer Reidy, M.D., and Soni Nageswaran, who have assumed the roles of resident and student editors to the RSV feature. Under Dr. Makkar's guidance, Dr. Reidy and Ms. Nageswaran will be working to enhance content for RSV and suggest improvements to the resident section of the AAFP Web site.

The editorial board meeting opened this year with a special appearance from the AAFP's new executive vice president, Douglas Henley, M.D. We were fortunate to be able to welcome Dr. Henley as the newest addition to our masthead and our newest leader during his first week at the AAFP.

Also new to the meeting this year was Dr. Rob Kelly, AFP's patient information editor. While Dr. Kelly joined the staff in July 1999, this summer he had his first opportunity to meet with the rest of the editorial board members. During the past year, Dr. Kelly has become an integral part of the patient information review process for AFP and has made substantial contributions to content. AFP continues to strive to provide patient information handouts to complement as many articles as possible.

Other attendees in addition to the medical and professional editorial staffs included Linda Siadys and Lindsey Clark from the Washington, D.C., editorial office, who handle the peer review process and coordinate article series. Also attending was Jeff Altwies, AAFP's interactive media manager (Webmaster) at the Leawood headquarters, who is in charge of bringing you AFP on the Web.

Together participants sought solutions to the basic challenges of how to bring readers the most practical state-of-the art clinical information possible while upholding high editorial standards and meeting a demanding 24-times-a-year publishing frequency. With the work of over 35 editorial staff members and countless other contributors to coordinate and track, encompassing hundreds of articles, departments and other materials, there's always a bit of housekeeping to do as well. Although challenges result in a few headaches along the way, the bottom line is that for us, bringing you our best is simply a labor of love.