COLLABORATION OF OPTOMETRIC ORGANIZATIONS ON COMMERCIAL SUPPORT OF CONTINUING EDUCATION

It is wonderful to see the stakeholders of the optometric profession voluntarily come together to work towards a common cause. The latest endeavor involves the issue of corporate support for continuing education. Your Academy has for many years had conflict of interest policies that endeavor to flush out corporate bias from presentations.

Many of you probably know that the drug company trade group, PhRMA, has a revised code of standards starting this month. Specifically, the code will prohibit drug companies from giving out free pens, free dinners, etc., and will put significant restrictions on sponsoring CE. Not every company, however, will be bound by the PhRMA standards. Corporate-sponsored education events will continue, and those companies that are bound by PhRMA can continue to sponsor education as long as the company does not control the content.

Five optometric organizations are joining forces to address this issue. Recently a news release stated the purpose of the collaboration, and I thought you should be aware of the Academy’s involvement. The first meeting of the steering committee will occur later this month in Chicago, and once the policy is developed you will receive the details with further explanation as to how these new standards will affect our meetings in the future. Please see below for the full text of the news release.
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Profession-Wide Optometric Organizations to Develop Guidelines for Commercial Support in Continuing Education
December 11, 2008 – To meet the rapidly changing needs of continuing education for practicing optometrists, five professional optometric organizations have initiated a steering committee to develop profession-wide guidelines for commercial support of continuing education. The American Academy of Optometry (AAO), the American Optometric Association (AOA), the Association of Regulatory Boards of Optometry (ARBO), the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry (ASCO) and the Southern Council of Optometrists (SECO) have issued a statement agreeing that they are “committed to ongoing excellence in optometric continuing education and ensuring high standards of accreditation. Therefore, we are dedicated to the development and adoption of guidelines for commercial support in optometric continuing education.”The pharmaceutical and medical device organizations have developed voluntary guidelines to ensure ethical interactions with health care professionals. Rather than one optometric organization developing similar guidelines for the optometric profession, the presidents of the five organizations formed a steering committee to oversee the development of optometric guidelines. Steering committee members will include representatives from the organizations and members of the ophthalmic industry. “Full input from the profession,” according to Dr. Christina Sorenson, President of ARBO, “will allow a collaborative effort that will benefit the profession greatly over the long term.”