Date: 11/14/2023

This past weekend, FIRST's Community Engagement Director Christine Wassel, attended this dynamic 2023 PeDRA Conference (11th Annual)  in Atlanta, Georgia with the help of a PeDRA scholarship. FIRST member and PeDRA's Patient Advisory Committee member, Sam Zavitz attended along with the Raybold family. Wyatt Raybold had a blast at the Camp Wonder session on Friday. 

We all enjoyed the opportunity to connect with the PeDRA community, including several other patient groups. We had fantastic conversations with patients, medical students, physicians (many from FIRST's Medical & Scientific Advisory Board) and researchers. The breakout groups allowed us to dive deeper into the issues surrounding skin disease research. in support of PeDRA's mission to create, inspire, and sustain research to prevent, treat, and cure childhood skin disease. There were too many highlights to list them all, but here’s a photo montage.

• A record number of 360+ attendees joined us this year.
• 20+ hours of breakout session time covering all of PeDRA's 11 Focused Study Groups.
• More than 130 research posters on display.
• Over 100 attendees played the Conference game and more than 40 conference game players qualified for the stylish PeDRA trucker hat.
• 100 registrants for the 2023 Dash for Discovery! 

There will be a lot of follow up this coming year and FIRST is looking foward to attending the PeDRA Conference each year.