President/Executive Director's message - Virginia T. Ladd

  September--and the usual "where did the summer go?" At AARDA, summer vacation didn't really register with us. After all, autoimmune disease with its demands doesn't take a holiday.

  Over the summer, I had the honor of representing AARDA at several meetings of committees of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the International Alliance of Patients' Organizations (IAPO), the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCiS), and the UN NGO Health Committee, to mention a few.

  Also, I was pleased to meet a good number of our AARDA members and friends as I took part in the AARDA public forums in Boston and St. Louis. That's always a bonus.

  Talking about past events, our Autoimmune Diseases Summit Meeting, held in March with other members of the National Coalition of Autoimmune Patient Groups (NCAPG), is still receiving kudos, especially from the researchers who attended. Besides the satisfaction of having had a really successful Summit, we are pleased that we had the pleasure of meeting and working with actress Melissa Joan Hart ("Sabrina the Teen Age Witch," "Dancing with the Stars," "Melissa & Joey"), our keynote speaker, who spoke in place of her friend Kellie Martin, our National Spokesperson.

  Just a couple reminders: AARDA friends and others should make note of a public forum scheduled for Cleveland, Ohio, on October 2. Also, Detroit area patients and friends should plan to attend the one-day seminar, scheduled for Saturday, October 23, in Warren, Michigan, cosponsored with the Scleroderma Foundation Michigan Chapter and supported by the Sjögren's Syndrome Foundation, National Fibromyalgia Association, and Lupus Foundation of America (see details in this newsletter).

  AARDA is providing support for a scientific meeting sponsored by the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, on September 7-8. The goal of this workshop is to obtain input from the environmental health science and autoimmune research communities, generate publishable reports on the state of the science, and determine the most appropriate and productive directions for research in the area of environmentally related autoimmune disease via the publication of a consensus statement. Given that environmental factors make up more than half the risk of developing an autoimmune disease, we are pleased to be able to support what surely will be a very important meeting.

  As you will see elsewhere in this newsletter, we are cosponsoring with the United Nations' NGO Health Committee a meeting on "The Global State of Autoimmunity Today." Outstanding speakers include our own Scientific Advisory Board Members Chairperson Dr. Betty Diamond, Chairman Emeritus Dr. Noel Rose, and Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld.

  AARDA's support for autoimmune research received a big boost recently through a very generous anonymous gift for the establishment of the O'Leary-Wilson Fellowship. This is a 3-year fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Center for Autoimmune Disease Research given in memory of the donor's parents. We have now sent the first payment of $50,000 to Johns Hopkins University in care of researcher Noel R. Rose, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the JHU Center for Autoimmune Disease Research. We thank Ms. Anonymous for her significant research contribution.

  This research fellowship is especially important because autoimmune disease research as a whole is being seriously threatened because of dwindling financial support for such research. AARDA is working to secure NIH grants and others, but many organizations are vying for grants which are increasingly being reduced or no longer available. It's a really competitive world for research dollars--but we keep trying!

  THANKS are in order to retiring AARDA Board members Dr. T. Stephen Balch, Abbie Bernstein, Howard E. Hagon, and Dr. John A. McCarthy, all of whom have served two consecutive terms and thus are not eligible for re-election at this time. All of them represent many years of valuable service to AARDA, and we are grateful to them. It is our hope that they will continue to be involved with AARDA in various ways. We have the highest regard for them and the contributions which they have made and, if possible, can continue to make.

  Also completing his current term of Board membership is the Rev. Dr. Herbert G. Ford who has been re-elected to another three-year term. Dr. Ford is a long-time supporter of AARDA and a valued member of its Board of Directors. He and fellow Board member Dr. Robert H. Phillips are newly elected members of AARDA's Executive Committee.

  This message wouldn't be complete without my THANKS to YOU, our friends. Truly, we couldn't do it without you!
My best regards to you,
Virginia