That Was Easy ......Wasn't It?

In the last year several years the OAA has managed to enter into many strategic agreements with the corneal reshaping industry. This had led to many coordinated projects that all members will be able to benefit from.These efforts have allowed us to reach out to different groups who will play a more significant part in our present and future. it has been a strategic goal of the OAA board of directors and myself to engage the corneal reshaping industry as fully as possible to grow the field.

With the help of The Gas Permeable Lens Institute(GPLI) and Ed Bennett we are inviting contact lens residents of all the major Optometry schools to attend our meeting in Scottsdale . We have found in the past that while these residents are attending meetings like The GSLS they have not been able to or not aware of the opportunity to attend the greatest show on Earth for corneal reshaping. This year that will not be the case and relationship with Ed and GPLI has helped us accomplish this goal.

Bausch & Lomb has been one of our key supporters since the beginning of the academy. With the help of John Hibbs,Andrew White and David Bland we have been able to forge a new working relationship. This has been especially helpful in two key areas for us. Vision By Design will have a record number of exhibitors at this years meeting due in part to the efforts of Bausch & Lomb. With the help of both B&L and Paragon Vision Sciences we are offering core curriculum courses and live wet labs on corneal reshaping and specialty lens fitting for the first time this year.

Paragon Vision Sciences has been very instrumental in providing resources to us that allow us to advertise our meetings to the CRT community. Like B&L they have provided opportunities that we have found helpful to growing our membership. This year we will again have a booth, presentation and workshops in San Diego at the San Diego Specialty Contact Lens Symposium courtesy of Jerry Legerton, The San Diego Optometric Society and Paragon. At our meeting in Scottsdale Paragon will be providing a Slit Lamp for our wet labs and coordinating a golf tournament on the Wednesday before the meeting as well as several special outings during the event.

Never one to rest on their laurels the academy with he help of its members continues to grow new opportunities. Several years ago Eyequip/Wave was a newcomer as far as exhibiting at our events. Today they are supplying incentives to the "Wavers" to attend our meetings and workshops. This the direct result of our great relationship with Scott Lewis and the result of many hours of work from our Wave community. BE Enterprises/Precision Technology and Randy Kojima have made outstanding contributions to our meeting content. Euclid Systems and Joann Simonsen have supported us both locally in the US and overseas. Oculus and Michael Wolber a new vendor at last years event has increased their support at Scottsdale. Steve Ernst (Contex)has contributed workshops and lectures for many years now as has Tom Reim(Dreimlens). Patrick Caroline(Paragon) has been invaluable in presenting the latest corneal reshaping trends in a manner that has been both entertaining and educational.

At this years meeting we will have several new exhibitors including Optovue who will provide a OCT for our Scleral Wet Lab. Peter Wilcox was extremely important in getting this done for us. Blanchard,Valley Contax and Acculens will be participating their Scleral Lens designs in our Wet Lab as well as our exhibit hall all through the efforts of John Hibbs of B&L. The decision to include specialty fitting in VBD 2012 has been an objective of our board and Eddie Chow and was made part of our strategic objectives laid down at VBD 2009 in Phoenix.

At the recent Global Specialty Lens Symposium in Las Vegas I approached the Contact Lens Manufacturers Association(CLMA) in hopes of engaging them in a cooperative effort to work together to grow the GP industry and the IAO/OAA. Our group I believe can be the key to efforts to grow the GP industry to a level that can support healthy growth in the CLMA member labs. In much he same way that the American Academy of Optometry (AAO) is able to support their programs and annual education meeting the IAO/OAA can serve that same role in providing fertile ground to grow demand for GP products and attending educational meetings like GSLS, SDSCLS and VBD. With the help of CLMA to promote IAO/OAA through its labs and working with us we can and will develop the best GP education on the planet with record turnout to support it.

The board of directors passed a resolution to explore the creation of an international academy in Chicago at VBD 2010 by setting up a committee led by Marino Formenti and myself. At VBD 2011 the committee recommended going forward with the international academy and it came into being by an act of our membership during that meeting. We are proceeding at break neck speed as the IAO becomes fully involved in Europe and Asia. A delegation from the IAO will be traveling to Hangzhou in late March to participate in the AOSLC and the launching of the International Academy of Orthokeratology Asia Section(IAOAs). We are blessed by great leadership of Asia Section from Drs, Lufan and Xie with expert help from our own Helen Duan.There will be a membership meeting of IAOAs and their first full corneal reshaping training sessions for attendees that weekend of the meeting. Later this year in Madrid the IAO will be participating in our European Section(EurOk) first education meeting. Marino Formenti,Antonio Calossi,Mauro Frisani,Basil Bloom, Jose Meijome and many others have put in many hours of planning sessions and are to be applauded for this great accomplishment.

In the next month you will be receiving a proxy from the academy. This proxy will ask for your approval of our new IAO board of directors and also a change in our by-laws creating a fourth section of our academy called Oceania. Later this year I will be traveling with Bruce Williams,Marino Formenti and Matt Herzberg to attend the Orthokeratology Society of Oceanias (OSO) annual education event. There we will meet with the membership to answer questions they may have about becoming a section of IAO. After that there will be a vote to officially join the IAO.

What's in the cards for the future. The OAA initiative to develop an integrated myopia control protocol will soon be center stage not only at VBD 2012 but in publications around the world. This initiative will be a practice changer as the committee members making up a cross section of the leading authorities in the eye care field makes its recommendations. It seems hard to believe that just ten short years ago the OAA began. While it certainly has been a challenging decade I believe that we are now poised to reap the benefits of our accomplishments. As they say only time will tell!

Cary M Herzberg O.D. FOAA

San Diego Specialty Contact Lens Symposium

The OAA will be contributing to the San Diego Specialty Lens Symposium February 24-26 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego California. The specialty lens conference is sponsored by the San Diego Optometric Society and it's chair Jerry Legerton. The weekend curriculum offers a wonderful opportunity to learn more about specialty Len fitting. I was fortunate to be included in the first symposium and heard first hand from the attendees on the comprehensive curriculum.

This year the OAA will have a lecture opportunity on Hyperopic molding and two workshops on corneal reshaping. We will also be in the exhibit hall as well. Several OAA members will also be present contributing as well. Michael Lipson will be covering CRT applications and Peter Wilcox will be speaking on OCT and Scleral Lens fitting. Kevin Reeder will be assisting us in the OAA workshops and Barry Eiden will be speaking on custom soft contact lenses.

This conference is unique in that it encourages practitioners to bring along a key staff member at no additional charge to the event. This exposure will help improve the success of specialty lens fitting once the doctor returns from the conference. Please check out the conference details at www.specialtycontactlens.org and if you are attending stop by and say hello at our booth.

Cary M Herzberg O.D. FOAA

IAO Sends A Delegation To AOSLC To Launch Our Asia Section (IAOAs)

Several of your IAO/OAA/EurOK members will be going to China in late March 29-April 01 to participate in the third annual Asia Orthokeratology & Specialty Lens Conference (AOSLC) in Hangzhou China. This conference will take place within the Conference of Optometry & Ophthalmology (COOC) taking place at the same time. This will be the leading international conference in China wIth over a thousand attendees!

The IAO delegation will be comprised of myself, Matt Herzberg,Bruce Williams,Eddie Chow, Sami El Hage,Dennis Leung, Marino Formenti and Helen Duan. While there we will be contributing to the conference itself and helping our Asia section as it is officially launched. On Saturday evening March 31 The International Academy of Orthokeratology Asia Section (IAOAs) will hold its first membership meeting and the following morning April 01 will have its first training sessions for attendees at the COOC.This will be a truly historic moment for all of us. A great deal of thanks to Drs Xie and LuFan along with Dr. Helen Duan for all their hard work to make this happen. I would like to also congratulate the entire board of IAOAs and the meeting organizers of AOSLC.

The launching of IAOAs is extremely timely in light of the incidence of myopia now in China where close to ninety percent of college attendees are nearsighted. If we are to have any chance of preventing another generation of children from the affliction we call myopia we must train and equip the eye care practitioners with the latest tools and techniques to deal with this health hazard to our children's well being. I am looking forward to our trip to China and contributing to these great events.

Cary M Herzberg OD. FOAA

Strategic Planning & Acquisitions

I hope you are having a successful and productive new year. While our members have been tending to their practices your academy has been extremely busy carrying out its strategic vision. Ever since we began ten years ago it's been my intention to grow this organization into a position where it could wield influence and power. This vision is not restricted to our specialty of corneal reshaping but rather the entire eye care community. This is going to be necessary to attain the position of influence to carry out our mission of attaining the status that Orthodontia has acquired in the Dental field. It will not be necessary to have corneal reshaping done by a majority of practitioners if we can convince the majority that referring for myopia control is in the patient and their best interest. That is the other side of this strategic effort to transform our group into a preventative care organization utilizing all available technologies including conel reshaping to carry out our new mission.

To accomplish this we will need to grow dramatically over the next few years. In part this will happen naturally as our membership outside the US becomes integrated within the new IAO. Still we must also look towards our own America's for more growth. The goal to grow an international membership of over five thousand members and locally to increase our own membership three fold. This would give us a combined total similar to the American Academy of Optometry and with an increased influence as well.

The OAA has reached an agreement with David Davidson to acquire his Ortho-K website along wih many other popular potential web addresses. This in one bold stroke gives us control over the number one website address in our industry! As all of you know a listing on this website has been included in your membership. However there have also been practitioners who have benefited from being listed that were not members of our group. In the future this will not be possible.

The OAA has engaged in extremely productive dialogues with both Paragon Vision Scinces and Bauch & Lomb. This will be realized in Scottsdale when you see our large exhibit area filled with vendors. In addition we have decided to offer a core curriculum in specialty lens fitting in Scottsdale. This has allowed us to appeal to a border base of labs who utilize both Paragon and Bausch & Lomb to supply these larger buttons. Due to our new relationships we can now rely on boh these companies to work through their practitioner networks to get the word out about our events. This allows us more spending flexibility which means better content and speakers.

Towards the end of 2011 the board of directors authorized the creation of a special committee charged with developing an integrated approach to myopia control. Richard Andrson was selected as the chair of this semi independent group. In the lst few months he has been active selecting the top people from all the different disciplines who will have input on the myopia control protocol. Attendees to VBD 2012 will receive the benefit of this as they learn what steps in their own practices they need to be taking to practice in this exciting field. Indeed the OAA itself is a world leader in this myopia control and we intend to remain so.

Your OAA at this moment is engaging with other groups like CLMA to grow both the fields of corneal reshaping and specialty fitting. I believe that we should enter into strategic partnerships that see all GP organizations prosper. In that light we have talks on going with the organizers of GSLS ( Global Specialty Lens Symposium) and SDSLS( San Diego Specialty Contact Lens Symposium)to see what will benefit both and grow the field and our organization. You have to appreciate how far we indeed have come and our increased influence as opportunities like these present themselves. We can no longer be ignored and that is because of our success carrying out our strategic visions.

Cary M Herzberg O.D. FOAA

Visting Las Vegas

Just got back from the Global Specialty Lens Symposium (GSLS) in Las Vegas. It was a great event and the organizing team headed by Craig Norman did a great job. Of particular importance to our field was the myopia section presented on The first day of the general sessions. This presentation consisted of Earl Smith of UHCO and Don Mutti of OSU giving their opposing viewpoints on myopia progression and cause. I congratulate both of them for an entertaining show. It is of particular importance that both presenters recommended intervention of corneal reshaping and special bifocal SCLs early in myopia development. Both Earl and Don felt that perhaps fifty percent reduction in eye elongation was a reasonable goal considering the eye normally elongates into adulthood .

While in Las Vegas I met with many of our exhibitors and detailed what we were expecting for our meeting. I am happy to report that this year we are working more closely then ever with Bausch & Lomb and Paragon Vision Sciences to promote Vision By Design 2012. I am also thrilled to tell you that we have close to thirty exhibitors this year. That means that attendees to our event will have a lot of booths to visit during our meeting.

Great meeting and excellent cuisine highlighted my stay in the city that never sleeps. While at the GSLS I had meetings with our colleagues from EurOK and we were able to lend them support for their first European Ortho-K meeting taking place in Madrid this June. As your President I also met with the leadership of GSLS about more cooperation between our two groups.

Cary M Herzberg O.D. FOAA