We at ITLC Lilly Conferences value you. We appreciate your commitment to student learning and your trust in the ITLC Lilly community. We look forward to sharing, discussing, and critiquing pedagogy with you in an effort to improve our professional selves and to bring about greater student learning.
With that said, we have decided that we cannot, in good conscience, risk bringing together a group of scholars in August for a convening. This difficult decision follows many internal meetings, speaking with healthcare practitioners, monitoring trends, and supporting local and state governments' plans to re-open states based on epidemiology data.
We have been in regular conversation with hotel management about the prospects of an event in August with appropriate social distancing guidelines in place. The DoubleTree by Biltmore Management and staff have been responsive and helpful in our conference planning in the reality of current and future anticipated levels of COVID-19 in Asheville, North Carolina. The management at the Doubletree supported our painful final decision that a Lilly Conference in Asheville in August is not viable.
Three main factors weighed most heavily in our final decision to cancel this event. First, the anticipation by many in the health professions that we will continue to struggle with COVID levels throughout the summer and likely experience a second wave of COVID in the Fall. Second, the limited size of the event we would be able to hold in the best of situations when social distancing policies are applied at the hotel conference facility. Finally, and most importantly, epidemiological concern of the impact airflow has on transmission and infection when hosting a group of people in a shared space across an extended period of time.
Thank you for taking the time to submit your scholarly work for consideration. All proposals have been reviewed and were a pleasure to read. With the anticipation of a second wave of Covid in the fall, we are proactively planning an online conference with the synchronous components to occur December 2 - 4, 2020. Although we are disappointed to not be together in August, we look forward to a time when being together in large groups does not jeopardize public wellbeing.
