RENAL PHYSICIANS ASSOCIATION
GUIDELINES FOR HOSTING SYMPOSIA
Renaissance Harborplace Hotel - March 20 -23, 2009

The Renal Physicians Association is offering the opportunity for our Corporate Patrons to present a satellite symposium in conjunction with RPA’s 2009 Annual Meeting. By supporting symposia, your company may offer a targeted and valuable event during which you may make contacts and gain visibility within the nephrology community. The RPA Annual Meeting is attended by over 300 physicians, practice managers and other renal healthcare providers from around the country who participate in plenary sessions, interactive workshops and exhibits. Don’t miss an excellent opportunity to meet with the decision makers and thought leaders in nephrology practice!

Rules & Regulations

RPA reserves the right to cancel a company’s event at any time if the rules below are broken.

1. Ancillary meeting programs are not developed, sponsored, planned or managed by the Renal Physicians Association and may not be promoted as an official RPA activity.
2. Applications to host Symposia must include the following:
   • Program title
   • Program description
   • Presentation titles
   • Intended speaker names, including academic and industry affiliations
   • Program objectives
   • Description of intended audience
   • Name of accredited CME provider
   • Fee made payable to RPA

Deadline for application submission is on or before October 8, 2008. A $1500 deposit must accompany applications. Applications will be reviewed when payment is received. Symposia time slots will be granted on a first come first paid basis. After October 8, 2008, we will open the opportunity to host symposia to outside companies.

3. RPA will retain approval rights on publication of proceedings (on paper and electronic formats) of any meeting held at the RPA annual meeting.
4. With RPA prior approval, RPA will allow the distribution of meeting announcements or promotional materials at the designated RPA meeting hotel.
5. In addition to approved wording, the RPA name, logo or acronym may not be used in any mailing pieces, signs, advertising or promotions in any media or on descriptive product literature either inside or outside of the meeting hotel.
6. PA will provide at no charge to participating companies the meeting space requested on the symposium application. RPA will not provide services, audio visual equipment, food or beverage beyond the request for meeting space.

Preparation of Promotional Materials
All brochures, invitations, announcements, posters, agendas, speaker descriptions, evaluations, postcards and other promotional and meeting materials must be approved by the RPA prior to printing.  Please allow five (5) business days for written approval of promotional materials to be faxed or emailed to you.  Meeting announcement / invitation / brochure must state the following:

"This symposium is approved by the RPA.  It is not part of the official RPA Annual Meeting as planned by the RPA Program Committee."

This text must be placed on the front cover of your brochure and in a prominent place on all other promotional materials.

Marketing and Promotion
If desired, the RPA will assist in the promotion of this symposium through the following:

• One time use of RPA’s membership mailing list to promote symposium to be held at the RPA 2009 Annual Meeting (approximately 3000 names). 
• A complimentary link from RPA’s annual meeting page on www.renalmd.org.
• Mailing list:  one complimentary set of RPA pre-registration labels for promotion of your program to RPA meeting attendees. The labels will be available January 25, 2009.
• Signage – 1 sign is permitted outside the meeting room at the time of the function; 2 signs are permitted in another appropriate area of the hotel (where permitted by hotel) on the day of the function.
• Exhibit booth – participants who also exhibit at the RPA meeting are welcome to promote their symposia from their exhibit booth in the RPA exhibit hall using the approved wording. (The cost of the exhibit booth is not included in the fee for the symposium.) 
• Presentation titles, location / times and registration information will be published in the January and March issues of the RPA News and on the RPA website in the meetings section if submitted by deadline; November 5, 2008 for January Newsletter and December 5, 2008 for March Newsletter.
• Promotion – RPA will send an email reminder with program description and registration information to attendees.

WEBSITE & CD OPPORTUNITIES: HDCN – Hypertension, Dialysis, and Clinical Nephrology

• Participants may obtain a web extension of their symposium on Hypertension, Dialysis and Clinical Nephrology (HDCN) for an additional fee of $30,000. HDCN is an official educational program of the RPA. It is an Internet journal / communications server (www.hdcn.com) that is targeted to nephrologists and other physicians and nurses interested in cardiovascular disease. Currently HDCN has 3600 paid subscribers who have access to “KEY ZONE” symposia from the main portion of scientific meetings and an active user base of 37,000 who have free access to all “FREE ZONE” sponsored satellite symposia. The journal is updated weekly under direction of its editor, John T. Daugirdas, MD, a nephrologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. All satellite symposia are announced by HDCN’s weekly mail to its FREE ZONE userbase. Benefits of having your program on HDCN are:

  *Talks are advertised via HDCN e-zone weekly mailing list, which goes out to 35,000 users, of whom 15,000 are physicians interested in kidney disease.
  *Talks are available for CME on the web for 18 months; usually they get accessed 2 - 8,000 times over this time period.
  *Slide references are available along with downloadable transcript, to allow for more thoughtful reviewing of content.

You can also choose to have a CD + web option for an additional $40,000 (cost may vary slightly depending on how many CDs are mailed out). This cost includes CD authoring, mastering, printing, affixing mailing labels, and postage. (Price based on 8,000 CDs mailed out)

The option also exists for a combined web-CD program, where the CD is mailed out to a mailing list of the sponsor’s choice. The cost for a combined web and CD program, including printing of 10,000 CDs and mailing them out to 10,000 U.S. addresses is $70,000.

Samples of sponsored symposia on HDCN can be found at www.hdcn.com/free.htm.
Use login ID = rpamember    password = rpamember

For more information about the web extension option on HDCN, please contact Dr. John Daugirdas at HDCN, 15W560 89th Street, Burr Ridge, IL, 60527, 630-325-3276 or email editor@hdcn.net

LIABILITY

For all symposia, the function organizer will take full responsibility for the event/meeting and will hold harmless the RPA, its officers, agents and employees from any and all liability associated with the symposium / ancillary meeting.

QUESTIONS
Please contact Desiree Bryant, CMP with questions: dbryant@renalmd.org; 301-468-3515 ext. 12

*Satellite Symposia are approved by the RPA. They are NOT part of the official RPA Annual Meeting as planned by the RPA Program Committee.

Download the application here!