September is promising to be a busy month for me. The updating of the video will be in pre-production, there is the script to review and rewrite, the location for the sleep lab sequences, the actors/participants. That all by itself would keep me plenty busy.
The American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery has its annual meeting in Washington, DC and I have made arrangements to meet with Dr. Ed Weaver who leads their sleep doctor group. I am hoping to get to the exhibit hall and review a the program of educational session to see who is talking about surgery and sleep apnea.
Later that same week I have meetings scheduled with the leaders of other organizations located in DC. A successful outcome in both meetings would be raising the visibility of the association and finding ways to partner with them to mutually advance our causes.
The week closes with a trip to Pittsburgh and the meeting of one of the councils of the American Trucking Association. Truck drivers are in the news these days and research shows they are at a heightened risk of developing sleep apnea. The trucking firm Schneider National has taken a pro-active approach to the problem by screening employees and providing for treatment.
The ASAA has the opportunity to make available our resources ie, patient education materials and the A.W.A.K.E. Network (and apneasupport.org) to the trucking company safety directors to help them help their employees at risk.
There is more travel in October... San Francisco for the American Society of Anesthesiology meeting and then Chicago for the American College of Chest Physicians meeting. I will be reporting on those when I am there.
I'll be back.
August 26, 2007
August 25, 2007
News and promises
I have some exciting news to share with all those who count on the American Sleep Apnea Association to provide unbiased information on diagnosis and treatment on OSA... we have received a generous grant to remake our 1994 video "What is Sleep Apnea?" We are currently interviewing production companies and hope to begin production in September. It should be available just time for holiday gift-giving.
Updating the video has been on my list since I got to the association three and a half years ago - yeah!
The other important news of the day concerns our online support group - http://www.apneasupport.org/. Due to serious limitations with the current web hosting company's capacity to handle the increasing traffic to the site, the site co-adminstrator had to make an emergency move to a new host.
He handled the transfer of the incredible amount of wisdom accumulated over the past two year from contributors to the forum with the flawless grace of an NBA All Star shooting from the outside with only seconds to play... thank you Mike.
The new home of the Forum, which is on downtownhost.com, is now on a dedicated server and is faster than greased lightening. It is able to accommodate a much higher level of traffic without the usual degradation in speed. Recent statistics already show an increase in visitors, pageviews and new subscribers. If you have not been in a while or not at all... check it out, you won't be disappointed in what you can learn there.
On a side note... we get tons of email at our main email address - asaa@sleepapnea.org, sadly much of it spam, but that is the price of having your email address out there for folks to access with questions and comments. Looking at it last week, along with the usual inquiries, there was a message from a anesthesiologist in Kuwait looking for ways to work with the ASAA to help his patients, a jounalism student from Denmark doing research on sleep apnea in America looking for an expert sleep researcher to help him, and a former A.W.A.K.E. coordnator now residing in Singapore who is interested in setting up an A.W.A.K.E. support group there. One word - wow!
Now the promise, since my friend and colleague Dr. Breus has added me to his blogroll and I suspect that there may be others (thank you Michael and thank you everyone else)... I will commit to being more intentional about writing in this space on a regular basis to report on my doings and the work of the association.
These are exciting and very busy times and I am pleased to share our successes and challenges with all those who take the time to read this.
I'll be back.
Updating the video has been on my list since I got to the association three and a half years ago - yeah!
The other important news of the day concerns our online support group - http://www.apneasupport.org/. Due to serious limitations with the current web hosting company's capacity to handle the increasing traffic to the site, the site co-adminstrator had to make an emergency move to a new host.
He handled the transfer of the incredible amount of wisdom accumulated over the past two year from contributors to the forum with the flawless grace of an NBA All Star shooting from the outside with only seconds to play... thank you Mike.
The new home of the Forum, which is on downtownhost.com, is now on a dedicated server and is faster than greased lightening. It is able to accommodate a much higher level of traffic without the usual degradation in speed. Recent statistics already show an increase in visitors, pageviews and new subscribers. If you have not been in a while or not at all... check it out, you won't be disappointed in what you can learn there.
On a side note... we get tons of email at our main email address - asaa@sleepapnea.org, sadly much of it spam, but that is the price of having your email address out there for folks to access with questions and comments. Looking at it last week, along with the usual inquiries, there was a message from a anesthesiologist in Kuwait looking for ways to work with the ASAA to help his patients, a jounalism student from Denmark doing research on sleep apnea in America looking for an expert sleep researcher to help him, and a former A.W.A.K.E. coordnator now residing in Singapore who is interested in setting up an A.W.A.K.E. support group there. One word - wow!
Now the promise, since my friend and colleague Dr. Breus has added me to his blogroll and I suspect that there may be others (thank you Michael and thank you everyone else)... I will commit to being more intentional about writing in this space on a regular basis to report on my doings and the work of the association.
These are exciting and very busy times and I am pleased to share our successes and challenges with all those who take the time to read this.
I'll be back.
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