This newsletter is a publication of The Platelet Disorder Support Association. The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only. For advice on your unique medical condition, please consult a health care professional. Contents:
ASH MEETING INFORMATIONThe 43rd annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) will be held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL from December 7 - 11, 2001. The good news is that you don’t have to be a hematologist to attend. On Friday, December 7, the "Third Annual Review of Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura" will take place from 12:00 noon to 4:00 PM in the Rosen Centre Hotel, near the Convention Center. If the third program is anything like the first two, you can expect to see a very large room filled with eager attendees listening to presentations from some of the top ITP researchers. Since this is a ‘Corporate Friday’ program it is open to all who are interested in attending. You don’t need to register for the conference or call ahead to attend this session. Just be there. The ITP review is sponsored by the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and supported through an unrestricted educational grant from Nabi. Keep in mind that the target audience is physicians. There will be an education program on platelets during the regular session of the ASH meeting. It is chaired by Keith McCrae. MD, from Case Western Reserve University and includes his presentation on "Pregnancy-Associated Thrombocytopenia" as well as talks by James Bussel, MD, New York Presbyterian Hospital, on "Novel Approaches to Management of ITP:Results from Recent Trials", Pier Mannucci, MD, University of Milan, "Diagnostic and Pathophysiologic Significance of the VWF Protease in Thrombotic Microangiopathies", and Douglas Cines, MD, University of Pennsylvania on "Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia and Thrombosis: New Insights into Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Management". You need to register for the conference to attend this and other ASH education sessions. The Platelet Disorder Support Association will have a booth at the meeting and representatives from PDSA will be attending these sessions. We will publish highlights from the meeting in an e-mail and print more information in our newsletter. We are pleased to be able to attend this meeting and share what we learn with our readers. If you are planning to go to the Corporate Friday session or the entire meeting, please let us know via e-mail or call 1-87-Platelet. We have 2 passes to the exhibit floor we can share and the option of including more volunteers to staff our booth. To find out more about the American Society of Hematology Meeting go to http://www.hematology.org NEW LEVELS OF MEMBERSHIPThe PDSA Board of Directors has approved two new levels of memberships, Contributors at $100 and Associates at $250.00. Contributors will receive our newly printed PDSA Tote Bag in addition to all the benefits of our ‘Friends of PDSA’. Associates will receive a PDSA Zip Duffel in addition to all the benefits of being a Contributor. You can now contribute on-line in these additional categories at http://www.pdsa.org/joinus.htm. Please consider upgrading your support to PDSA. We can do more with your help. The Platelet Disorder Support Association is a 501 (c ) 3 organization. All contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. HELP US. HELP OTHERSOur thoughts continue to be with those who were touched by the tragic events on September 11. As the turmoil continues, we all want to give as much as we can to help those in need as we try to maintain the life we knew. In this spirit, the Platelet Disorder Support Association will donate 10% of all profits from the Platelet Store and memberships to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. NEW E-MAIL FORMATWe’ve sure you’ve noticed the change in format from the other e-mails you have received from us. We’re standardizing our e-mails and adding some features we think you’ll appreciate, making them more like other e-newsletters. Our plan is to send them every two weeks, on a Monday. In each, we want to include some helpful ITP information in addition to product and service announcements. We’ve also added advertisements. We’d appreciate any comments on this new format and timing. Just send them to news@pdsa.org. ADVERTISING WITH PDSAPDSA will now be accepting advertising in our newsletter and in these e-newsletter messages. We are doing this for several reasons. One, the obvious, advertising dollars allow us to do more. Our next newsletter will have more pages due to the generosity of our advertisers. Another reason we are accepting advertising is that some companies contacted us and wanted us to help them tell you about their products and services. We feel these products could be beneficial to you and you would want to hear about them too. It was a good match and the right time for us. We will be accepting advertising on our web site soon. If you or your company are interested in placing an ad with us, just call us at 1-87-Platelet or e-mail at pdsa@pdsa.org. The ads in our paper newsletter must pertain to ITP and wellness. This is a requirement to maintain our non-profit postal rate. We can be more flexible with the content of our e-newsletter and web site ads. However, we would like all of our advertising to be potentially beneficial to our readers. |
