All,
The OEPF Board is happy to announce its newest Board of Director member: Dr. Cathy Stern!
OEPF Board of Directors: www.oepf.org/oepf-board-of-directors/
Dr. Cathy Stern OD, FCOVD, FNORA, FCSO maintains a private practice near Boston limited to vision therapy, syntonic phototherapy and neuro-optometric rehabilitation. She is a current board member of the College of Syntonic Optometry (CSO) and faculty for NORA Curriculum II. Previously she was faculty for the CSO Basic Course, the COVD Brain Injury course and physician mentor for MIT ReDx (Rethinking Engineering Design Execution for Digital Health). Her current interests include helping optometrists add myopia control and vision therapy to their practices and visual processing for better use of assistive technology. Dr. Stern believes the eye and vision are key players in prevention, enhancement and rehabilitation for lifelong success.
The OEPF Board hereby wants to extend its thanks to Hansel Huang, OD, FCOVD for his service as an OEPF Board member. On a professional and personal level, we are very grateful for the time Hansel served on the Board and we will miss him, but understand his family and professional life needs to take priority.
Overall, we’re winding up a pretty crazy two years. The multi-layered worldwide governmental response to COVID shifted OEPF Clinical Curriculum Courses and regional Congresses to the virtual world and gave life to the OEPF Wednesday evening virtual lecture series. Those Wednesday lectures have showcased a wide variety of top-notch speakers. Be sure to pay attention to the announcements of those lectures in your email inbox.
COVID lockdowns and COVID itself also gave birth to the special COVID issue of our Journal, Optometry and Visual Performance. Many thanks to all the contributors to that issue and to the expert editing by Drs. Taub and Schnell. The surveys we asked you all to participate in producing some of the information contained in those papers. Your participation shows that, to some degree, data can be “crowd-sourced.” Please continue that participation. You all have pertinent bits of data and experiences that, put into a format with other similar data, can be useful and informative. KEEP IT UP!
None of that was easy. We owe special thanks to Line Vreven, the OEPF Executive Director. and, we owe many thanks to the Clinical Curriculum instructors who were able to bend to the new environment. Those instructors include Drs. John Abbondanza, Bob Hohendorf, Virginia Donati, Meredith Graham and Geoff Heddle. We trust they will continue to provide excellent teaching in the Clinical Curriculum Courses.
Next will be ICBO 2024, the International Congress of Behavioral Optometry in Ottawa, Canada. OEPF is working with our hosts, Vision Therapy Canada as well as soliciting ideas from our other ICBO partners and the result will be world-class. Keep watching for particulars.
As we launch into the post-lockdown era, the Board of OEPF appreciates your help with continuing the mission of educating optometrists, vision therapists and allied professions on the form of optometry that looks beyond acuity and eye health – very important things, by the way – into binocularity and vision development. Stay with us. Consider sending the Journal a case study or a larger paper. Don’t be afraid to contact any of the Board. And remember the F in OEPF. OEPF is a charitable foundation serving optometry with education. Help us in that mission and journey.
Eric Hussey, OD President, OEPF
