The ATS Opening Ceremony keynote speaker Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, comes back from the “future” to look at how health care can evolve from what we envision now. He challenged members to be optimistic and to remember that people will always be people, not just patients.

Refiloe Masekela, MD, and Margareth Pretti Dalcolmo, MD, PhD, will share career insights at the Women’s Forum, and attendees will receive a memento from the woman-owned business Cheers in a Box.

The quality and safety of patient care is at risk when the ranks of health care providers are diminished, said ATS Nursing Assemblies Program Committee Chair Sharron Crowder, PhD, RN, ATSF. The Nursing Year in Review will explore possible solutions to this international crisis, including recruitment and retention of nursing staff.

The Critical Care Clinical Core Curriculum kicks off with a look at the prevention, treatment, and management of bacterial and viral respiratory infections in the ICU. Co-chairs Edward Kilb, MD, and Diana Kelm, MD, ATSF, preview what to expect.

The first of three sessions on infant lung diseases will explain what neonatologists need, from the pediatric pulmonary perspective, when consulting on BPD cases, said Pediatric Core Curriculum Chair Jane Gross, MD, PhD

The ATS International Conference will present Clinical Year in Review 2, the second of four sessions discussing papers from across pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine. Topics will focus on lung cancer screening, the impact of long COVID, and palliative and critical care.

Panelists will review non-invasive ventilation modes and their application, describe NIV use with heart failure and patients with sleep-disordered breathing, and identify best practices for the diagnosis and management of sleep disorders in long COVID-19.

Daily award presentations will take place through Tuesday at the ATS 2023 International Conference. Saturday’s Opening Ceremony highlighted three award presentations, including the inaugural J. Randall Curtis Humanism Award. Sunday afternoon’s Awards Ceremony will feature the J. Burns Amberson Lecture, the Edward Livingston Trudeau Medal, and the Distinguished Achievement Award.

Delivering this year’s J. Burns Amberson Lecture, Zea Borok, MD, ATSF, will describe her journey to become a leader in medicine, highlighting the challenges she faced in finding acceptance for paradigm-shifting research into cell plasticity, as a woman in the field, and as an immigrant forging a life in the U.S.

Environmental and occupational lung diseases can result from the inhalation of chemicals, allergens, and toxins. Researchers, including session Co-Chairs Gokhan M. Mutlu, MD, ATSF, and Ivana Verona Yang, BS, PhD, will discuss environmental exposures and their cellular and physiological effects on lung health.