Message from the PAOF Chair

Dear Friends,

With the support of the PAOF, we have had very successful PAAO events worldwide and our collaborations are larger than ever. The PAAO is more and more the organization that you want to belong to, if you want to network! However, PAAO is not only connections, it is a lot of education! We are immensely proud about the educational impact of our eLearning program coordinated by Drs. Eduardo Mayorga, Helena Filipe and Eduardo Viteri. PAAO eLearning is supported by an educational grant from Abbvie Foundation, and it includes “CampusPAAO”. CampusPAAO has become like an online university for ophthalmology in the region. Webinars, and synchronous and asynchronous courses are currently dictated in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. The number of attendees that benefit from these activities is increasing exponentially and we give opportunity to our professors and PAAO-YO members to reach our PAAO community. We very specially thank and congratulate Dr. Eduardo Mayorga who is stepping down as the Chair of the eLearning Committee after more than 10 years of service. Eduardo has been instrumental in developing our e-learning platform and has been extremely generous in every possible way imaginable. Furthermore, It will be a major task to find his replacement!

I would like to recognize our President Paulo Dantas for his initiative to create a new educational program by the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology (PAAO), the Pan-American Virtual Surgery Series (PAAO-VSS) which will highlight a series of surgical topics monthly over a six-month period featuring one subspecialty each month. The idea is to have one hour Zoom session with surgical movies on each field of subspecialty, with live discussion by the participants. It already started with all success with RETINA coordinated by Mauricio Maia and myself, with professors such as Arturo Alezzandrini Jr. (Argentina), Maria Berrocal (Puerto Rico), Virgilio Morales (Mexico), Andre Maia (Brazil), Juan David Arias (Colombia) and Andres Lasave (Argentina).

The PAOF continues to work tirelessly and supports 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 as we speak. We hope that PAAO members will generously support the Foundation (https://paao.org/paof/donate/) throughout the year. No gift is small, donate what you can. The more gifts donated, the more support the Foundation can provide to PAAO programs.

Please remember, 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!

J. Fernando Arevalo MD PhD FACS FASRS

Chair
Pan-American Ophthalmological Foundation (PAOF)