SIDP President Outlines Priorities for Coming Year

As she prepares to take over as president of the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP) in June, Lisa Dumkow, PharmD, FIDP, BCIDP, shared her vision for the organization, including helping to cultivate younger clinicians in their careers.

Speaking during the recent MAD-ID and SIDP 2026 annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, Dumkow talked about the opportunities ahead for infectious diseases pharmacists to take on larger roles in research.

“We discussed launching some clinical research awards,” Dumkow said. “We have really wanted to help bolster the clinical research that our members are doing. These are members who are doing kind of like what I do in my practice site, which is retrospective research, maybe some case controls, quasi-experimental studies. They're not getting the big grants; they're really doing practice-based research, and we want to be able to support those folks in being able to get more research training and get their research out there in the world. So [we’re] supporting them with things like publication fees or even coming to a meeting and being able to present their work.”

She also emphasized the importance of creating a strong professional network and mentoring future leaders in the field.

“We have a trainee community where you can ask questions, hopefully in a safe space; share documents; and really find your people,” Dumkow said.

In terms of her big overarching goal, she said the organization has many initiatives already in the works, so Dumkow wants to continue to move them along.

“My goal is to continue to move the society forward and allow our members and our committees to do what they do. And just advocate for our committees, and so again, we've got a lot of really exciting things happening among all of our committees.”

New Antimicrobials Meeting

Dumkow reflected on the 2 organizations’ momentum, and one of the exciting things that came out of the MAD-ID/SIDP meeting was the launch of the new Antimicrobials meeting in 2027, focused on combining cutting-edge science with clinical antimicrobial practice. The new conference will be held from May 22 to 26, 2027, in Baltimore, Maryland. Dumkow said the new meeting will be a continuation of the existing meeting with some new elements added in.

“People have loved the MAD-ID meeting, and so we don't want to make drastic changes, but we do have quite a variety of practitioners within SIDP, and so in bringing those 2 organizations together, we really want to meld [them together]. We want to make sure that there's a space for PK/PD [pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics] and basic science…. We will be making sure that we honor and maintain those classroom workshops that our frontline stewards really appreciate in terms of getting to connect with other frontline stewards and have discussions. As well as bringing the PK/PD workshop to the meeting next year, our fellowship forum will be there, and we're actually also going to be launching a PGY2 forum, which is more of like a half-day to three-quarters of a day forum for these residents as well as students and PGY1 residents who are interested in going into infectious disease training,” Dumkow said.