Message from the PAOF Chair

Dear Friends,

As the year is only getting started, we look ahead to many Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology’s (PAAO) exciting activities. With education as a core mission for the Pan-American, we have kept you updated in 2021 through the webinars, our digital journal PAJO, and e-learning courses to help our members give the gift of sight to their patients. We plan to continue supporting PAAO programs as we transition to in-person meetings again (Miami and Buenos Aires here we go!).

The Pan-American Ophthalmological Foundation (PAOF) supports the PAAO, through education and with the generosity of many of you, has contributed significantly to the prevention of blindness in the Americas and is building the future leaders of ophthalmology in our region. The new year gives us the amazing opportunity to look ahead with hope and optimism for what is coming in 2022. We hope to be reunited with friends and family with the help of our scientist that have develop the vaccines to keep us safe. Even though the Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 has made the start of 2022 a little bumpy, we will get there.

We want to take a moment to thank you for being a PAAO member and look forward to what we can achieve together in 2022. The diversity of our membership — from 26 national societies and members in more than 30 countries, gender, age, or subspecialty — is what makes our community strong and makes it attractive to join our organization.

The PAOF continues to support the PAAO membership, particularly our junior/early-career members via various grants/awards, and opportunities through our Travel Awards, and scholarships. We are in the process of creating more opportunities for you. We hope that PAAO members will generously support the Foundation (https://paao.org/paof/donate/) throughout the year. The more gifts donated, the more support the Foundation can provide to PAAO programs.

The New Year is always a fresh start full of promises. The future is great if we stick together as a Pan-American community! We are better, stronger and the goal is to meet again at our XXVI Pan-American Regional Course in conjunction with Bascom Palmer’s XLIV Inter-American Course (CURSO) October 16-19, 2022 in Miami, FL, and of course our XXXV Pan-American Congress of Ophthalmology, March 17-20, 2023 in Buenos Aires Argentina! It’s at these two meetings where ophthalmology from all the Americas come together to meet and you cannot miss that!

Happy and Healthy New Year!

J. Fernando Arevalo MD PhD FACS FASRS

Chair
Pan-American Ophthalmological Foundation (PAOF)