|
Greetings ,
This month's quote is from one of my favorite cowboy philosophers: Will Rogers. You can read it at the end of this newsletter. It is appropriate for this issue, because I want to take a moment to review this past year and share with you some of our accomplishments, and also discuss our future course. More on that, below.
But first, let's remember that a primary objective of this organization is to meet the needs of its constituents: therapists, patients, researchers, and the general public. To do that, we must make it easy to provide input, and listen to that input. To that end, we have decided to reserve this month's Biotherapy Live! webinar as a "Town Hall Meeting." Join us live, if you can; or send in your questions in advance. You can even watch the recording afterwards and leave your comments for us. Webinar details can be found below.
The Year in Review
With regard to improving access to care and care providers, we fielded questions from nearly 200 therapists, patients and family members this year alone, receiving an average of 5 - 6 e-mails, text messages or telephone calls per week. In terms of educational efforts, we were not able to provide independent courses this year nor participate in any national or international conferences as we previously have done, but efforts are underway to do that in the coming year. Still, we managed to work with a host of others researchers and educators who have published or presented educational materials for patients and therapists.
Thanks to the generosity of our members, donors, and supporters, we were able to contribute materials and funding to Dr. Frank Stadler's project, already available on line: "A Complete Guide to Maggot Therapy - Clinical Practice, Therapeutic Principles, Production, Distribution, and Ethics." We will be talking more about this work in the coming months; but for now, you can view or download it from here.
Another publication this year was the BTER Foundation's position paper, "Assessing the competency of clinicians performing maggot therapy." As discussed in previous issues of this newsletter, this publication identifies the characteristics necessary to define, achieve, and evaluate clinical competency in maggot therapy. It also provides the framework from which others can create training or certification programs.
Our research efforts are ongoing. Laboratory studies from the past 3 years will soon be submitted for review and publication. Future clinical and basic research priorities will follow the recommendations made by the respondents to our recent survey, and these will be reviewed in detail during the Town Hall Webinar.
So with that, I invite you to join us for the BTER Town Hall Webinar, if you can (details below).
I hope you all look at the achievements this year with pride in what we made possible, together. But then be sure to look forward, to where you want us to go. We can get there, with your guidance, your support, your partnership.
Advancing healthcare through education and research in biotherapy,
| 
