Messages from the President

The Alliance for the Canadian Arthritis Plan is hosting research-based information workshops and screening clinics for government officials in Ottawa and provinces across Canada. "Arthritis 101" builds much need arthritis awareness.

Advocacy can be as simple as talking with your neighbour about your sore knee, as straighforward as writing a letter to the editor, or as complex as meeting with the Minister of Health after years of trying to get an appointment. It's all advocacy and it counts. Persistence pays off.

Spring is more than tulips and daffodils, RRSPs and T4s. It's Annual Report time - working with designers and layout artists to produce a document that is appealing to the eye, compact and interesting to the read. It's also CAPA budget time.

Meet the new members of the CAPA Steering Committee, their choice for Executive representation and the expanding commitment of the working committees.

The past six years of conceiving, creating and building a national arthritis patient organization have been very rewarding.

Just when you thought the “E” word was tucked away until the new year, along comes CAPA’s country-wide call to the general membership for nominations to the Steering Committee and subsequent election of leaders.

Collaborating with over two dozen organizations, CAPA is making headlines nationally, provincially, and in government boardrooms

From its modest beginnings three years ago, CAPA has taken root and is expanding into new areas of arthritis advocacy. New faces have joined the Steering Committee, Juvenile Inflammatory Arthritis has moved to the forefront of arthritis concerns and home care has been added to the CAPA plate.

The cross-country, grass-roots nature of the Canadian Arthritis Patient Alliance gives it an unassailable moral authority and makes it a real player in health-care politics. At no time in history has it been more important for the arthritis community stakeholders to work together in order to improve the lives of people living with arthritis. Denis Morrice applauds CAPA involvement.

Children, their parents, and pediatric health care professionals are speaking out, demanding that Juvenile Arthritis receives the attention it deserves. CAPA has offered to help.