About Us

In 2017, a group of engaged SIDP leaders recognized an opportunity for the Society to expand its educational, innovative media offerings to further the mission and vision of SIDP. We wanted a place for our community to engage in “water cooler” conversations about the hottest topics in infectious diseases pharmacotherapy. Some of our best ideas came from such face-to-face conversations. Could we recreate that magic in a podcast format and share it with a wider audience? The vibe was intended to be informal and thought-provoking – a place to genuinely debate the evidence, discuss real-world implementation, and get creative about next steps to advance science and improve patient care. There was – admittedly – collegial debate about the merits of an SIDP-produced podcast (hey, we can’t all always be right!). Luckily, the Board voted to pilot a podcast production called “The Itch” which was a 3-episode, standalone mini-series focused on penicillin allergy created and led by Julie Ann Justo and Jason Pogue, who were joined by SIDP content expert members Bruce Jones and Mary Staicu. This success of this pilot ultimately resulted in the Board approving the transformation of the “SIDP Publications Committee” into the “SIDP Publications and Podcasts Committee” for the subsequent 2018-2019 organizational year.

Margaret Cook and Erin McCreary served as Chair and Vice Chair, respectively, for this new committee. A small group of SIDP members also served to brainstorm podcast name and purpose – Keenan Ryan, Jason Pogue, Melissa Johnson, David Ha, David Butler, Omar Perez, and Helen Newland. Breakpoints’ foundation is also thanks to other medical podcast hosts – including Paul Sax and Shreya Trivedi – who shared tips on how to produce a podcast. We remain so grateful for their kindness and mentorship as we started out.

In February 2019, the next mini-series was recorded with the first Breakpoints guests – Jamie Kisgen, Libby Dodds-Ashley, and Lisa Dumkow, and host – Erin McCreary. This time, we focused on antimicrobial stewardship. These early episodes showed that everyone must start somewhere – we had questionable audio quality and no intro/outro music, but we had passionate, dedicated pharmacists and a joy for sharing knowledge and constructive dialogue.

After we had recorded 10 episodes of Breakpoints (thanks to Ryan Shields for helping to knock out the subsequent four!), SIDP applied for Breakpoints to be posted on all major podcast platforms. After 48 hours of breath-holding, the podcast episodes were widely available, and we were off!!

We’ve grown tremendously over the years, migrating from Zoom to Riverside for recording, creating recurring segments like “I Feel Nerdy!” and the “Dosing Consult” series, expanding from 1 to 4 hosts, and eventually breaking Breakpoints off into its own standing SIDP Committee. We’ve had hundreds of speakers and volunteers record, edit, transcribe, and peer review content and it’s been the most amazing experience to watch this grow. We are forever grateful to our audience of antimicrobial audiophiles and look forward to keeping the conversation going.