We strive to facilitate the exchange of information and professional growth of Polish American physicians and biomedical scientists.
ABOUT US
We are a group of independent physicians and scientists. We practice medicine in variety of specialties including Developmental Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Addiction Medicine, Integrative Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Nephrology, Child Neurology, Radiology, Pathology, Molecular Genetics, Synthetic Neurobiology, Molecular Biology, Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Magnetic Resonance research.
We work for many institutions across the state including clinics, hospitals, universities and non-profit organizations.
We meet quarterly to discuss scientific advances in our fields, share our knowledge with fellow physicians and scientists from different specialities and disciplines.
We support our activities entirely through donations and do not collect membership dues. All donations are tax deductible.
NEWS
Polish American Medical Society growth continues. Our organization grew from two members to over twenty in the span of one year. We have held regular meetings in the Twin Cities area. For the second year, we held one of our meetings in Rochester, MN as the organization expands beyond the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro area. We are constantly working on making improvements of our operations. We hired an accountant to keep up with non-profit organization reporting requirements, expanded our website, started a Facebook account in an attempt to improve our visibility, advertise our events, and connect with our members and affiliates. So far, most of our traffic comes through Google and Facebook, and we have readers from many countries, mostly the US and Europe.
While we still have our Holiday/ Christmas Party to look forward to, it is important to reflect on 2019 and its highlights.
In 2019 we held a couple of events for a wider Minnesota audience, in collaboration with other organizations, including YWCA Downtown Minneapolis and Alliance Francaise.
We introduced the Twin Cities cinematic fans to Kinga Debska and her 2018 release “Playing Hard/Zabawa, zabawa”. Kinga Debska is an exciting Polish film director who delivers artistically by skillfully telling unexpected stories without sentimentality. “Playing Hard" is one of them, and addresses an important public health issue.
Next year PAMSM will co-sponsoring an educational event at the University of Minnesota Department of Psychiatry. The event is “PsychCINEMA: Exploring Cognition at the Movies” and it will be held on February 5, 2019. We are excited that the movie “Playing Hard/Zabawa, zabawa” will be shown and discussed with Medical Students and Psychiatry Residents, as it can serve as an excellent teaching tool, showing the reality of addiction as well as cross-cultural higlights. Our members Drs. Zylowski and Litak will be the discussants.
For the year 2020, we plan to hold our annual meeting in February. We will be hosting regular meetings with a variety of speakers, including our own members, who work in diverse fields of medicine and biomedical science, as well as guest speakers. While some of our meetings are limited to only our members, many of our events will be available to a wider audiences. We want to focus on education in science, art and history in relation to medicine or biomedical science as well biomedical industry ties between Poland and Minnesota.
We plan to embark on a visual history project focusing on documenting presence of contemporary Polish born Minnesotans “Kaleidoscope: Spotlight on Polish Americans in Minnesota.” The goal of the project is to present Polish Americans beyond the stereotypical image, and show the diversity of Polish immigrants in Minnesota. The phase one of the project is slated to start in 2020.
In 2020, we plan to focus on fundraising, increase our reach, and broaden our offerings.
I am truly excited about what the next year is going to bring. We are on an exciting path of growth and hope to positively impact our community.
We invite you to learn more about our programs and join our membership. Thank you for your support!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Katarzyna Litak, M.D.,
President
December 4, 2019
