By: Linda Wilhelm, President
As 2018 draws to a close, the CAPA Board would like to wish you a very happy holiday season. We are very excited to begin 2019 with a new look and after months of hard work, a brand-new website! The past year has been a busy one. In February, our Saskatchewan Representative, Janet Gunderson attended the Canadian Rheumatology Association’s meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. Heading to the opposite coast, two board members, Annette McKinnon and Linda Wilhelm attended the annual Canadian Agency in Drugs and Technologies in Health better known as CADTH symposium in Halifax, presenting as part of a panel on our Methotrexate resource. We partnered with The Arthritis Society on multiple patient input drug submissions to CADTH for new medications to help those living with Arthritis.
In June, our Board went international traveling to Amsterdam for the European League of Rheumatism annual conference, meeting with our European patient colleagues, as well as representatives from U.S. based Creaky Joints. It was exciting to have three posters accepted for presentation at the meeting; Dawn Richards presented on our methotrexate resource, Laurie Proulx on the workplace survey results and Nathalie Robertson on our member needs survey.
After the announcement of National Pharmacare Council, Board members participated in the country wide consultations held throughout the summer. To celebrate Arthritis Awareness month in September, we also successful held our first-ever Twitter chat on pregnancy and parenting with arthritis and made our resource available in French. Closing out the year, we continued our involvement in research, in November four board members attended and presented at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Strategy for Patient Oriented Research Summit in Ottawa on our involvement in various projects and networks. We would like to thank all those we partner with, without your support our work our work would not be possible.