Rock This Joint

Dear members of CAPA,

From October 27 to November 3, 2005, arthritis stakeholders will gather in Ottawa for three important events: the international meeting of the Bone and Joint Decade, the Canadian Arthritis Network’s (CAN) Annual Scientific Conference, and the Summit on Standards for Arthritis Prevention and Care.

Stakeholders participating in the conferences will include people with arthritis (consumers), Canadian and international researchers and funding agencies, the World Health Organization, physicians, surgeons, allied health professionals, industry, and governments (federal, provincial and territorial).

The Summit on Standards for Arthritis Prevention and Care, is being organized by the Alliance for the Canadian Arthritis Program (ACAP), an unprecedented alliance of organizations established to address the shortfalls in arthritis care, research and education.

The Summit itself has four objectives:

• Build support for relevant, actionable standards for the prevention and care of people with arthritis
• Identify the barriers to prevention and care of arthritis and develop strategies to overcome these barriers through the implementation of standards
• Set the priorities for future research needed to develop additional standards for arthritis prevention and care
• Provide a blueprint to assist Canadians with arthritis, health care professionals, public and private payers, and all levels of government in removing barriers and meeting the standards

Team members will be drawn from a cross-section of stakeholder groups who have an interest and expertise in the priority area for which a standard is being developed. Team members may be consumers, clinicians, researchers, health care professionals, government officials, etc. Other consultation techniques can be used to ensure that the necessary range of experts and stakeholders are consulted. As a consumer representing CAPA, I have been asked to collaborate in some of these teams and I will need your help to accomplish this important task.

Consumers organizations currently involved in the planning committee of the Summit include:

We want to receive the input and the help of as many consumers as possible in order to properly reflect everyone’s perspective. In preparation for the summit, draft standards need to be developed, and this is where we need your help. Time frames are relatively short, each of the priority areas for standards has an identified ‘team leader’ who is responsible for assembling their team, to work together to develop the standards for that priority area, and they hope to have these ‘teams’ identified in the next 2 weeks. The first draft of the standards is needed by mid-May with completed drafts by the end of June. The standards will then go out to the broader community for consultation with the final standards ready in September. These will be the standards that are presented at the Summit in November. In order to help you decide in what area you may want to provide your help, I am including as an attachment to this letter appendix 1 that refers to the 10 priority areas which will have been identified by the planning committee and which will be addressed at the Summit. As the ‘teams’ will be geographically diverse, and due to the short time frames, the work developing the standards will be done by e-mail and teleconference, actual in-person meetings will be unlikely.

Your help is important for the success of the conference. The more consumers we will involve in the planning process, the more chances we have that arthritis consumer’s concerns will be addressed during and after the Summit. If you wish to volunteer, please choose 1 priority area and respond by e-mail to Cathie Hofstetter at mcfence@on.aibn.com, who will pass your name along to the appropriate planning committee member.

Thanks for your involvement, we will keep everyone apprised of the progress of the Standards of Arthritis Prevention and Care. ‘ROCK THIS JOINT’!

Sincerely,
Cathie Hofstetter
Representative of the Canadian Arthritis Patient Allianceon the planning committee of Summit on Standards for Arthritis Prevention and Care

Appendix 1

The Summit Planning Committee has identified 10 priority areas in which standards will be developed. A Standards Development Team will be formed for each priority area. Each Standards Development Team will identify priority needs and issues within their assigned priority area and develop a proposed standard to address each priority need or issue.

The 10 priority areas for standard development are: