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Healthcare professionals
Stuart L.Weinstein, M.D.
Ignacio V. Ponseti Chair and Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Iowa Health Care
As a healthcare professional you are undoubtedly aware of the need for increased focus on bone and joint disorders. All disorder disciplines have cause, but the musculoskeletal system is not regarded as one requiring urgent increased attention. Yet it is the No. 1 reason patients visit doctors. One in seven Americans has a musculoskeletal impairment, and around 28 million new cases are reported every year. That is where the Bone and Joint Decade comes in.
This United States Bone and Joint Decade (USBJD) site provides you with resources, information, and tools that you can use - even material you can hand to patients. We invite you to become involved in our activities, designed around our goals to increase public awareness, improve patient education, increase research, and improve diagnosis and treatment.
On March 25 President George Bush signed a proclamation designating the years 2002-2011, as the Bone and Joint Decade in the United States. The "ball is now squarely in our court" to make the goals of the Decade a reality. For the Decade to be successful, it must be a grass roots effort within and among our organizations and our patients.
The key to success of the United States Bone and Joint Decade is the development of new collaborative partnerships aimed at achieving the goals. These collaborations between patient advocacy groups, musculoskeletal associations, care providers, researchers and industry through the USBJD will not only achieve the Decade's goals but will also help each individual professional member organization more effectively accomplish their own organizational goals.
The USBJD website will keep you updated on the USBJD and international BJD activities, current and future initiatives, patient information, key web links to other supporting organizations, available downloads that may help you in your own BJD efforts. The website will, I hope, be one that you visit often as your portal to the efforts of all of us to achieve the mission of the Bone and Joint Decade.
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