The New Year is here!
It’s time to confirm that we will all be in
Boston for the 46th AAOP Scientific meeting!!
Our next meeting will be a live meeting, the first in three years, at the Seaport Westin Hotel, Boston, April 28-May 1st, 2022.
April 28-May 1st, 2022: It will be exciting to be in Boston; for those who haven’t been to Boston recently the Seaport area has really developed and is a prime spot to hold a convention. It will be awesome to be together again. The President’s reception will be Friday night and we are still developing the venue for a research committee fund raiser for Saturday evening. As travel has opened-up with vaccination rates climbing, we confidently expect that 2022 will be an in-person meeting. We will follow whatever COVID safety recommendations are in place for the City of Boston at the time of the meeting. Most likely the Omicron virus will have run itself out by early spring and many Covid restrictions will be lifted by meeting time. But everyone who can, should be vaccinated and boosted, or have the appropriate medical waver in place to allow them to attend. One can look at the requirements to attend The Yankee Dental Meeting which will be held at the Boston Convention Center Jan 27-29th 2022 as an example as to what could be expected at the AAOP meeting should restriction not be relaxed before our meeting. To attend the Yankee meeting, one must show proof of vaccination (at least one vaccination shot) or a medical or religious waiver. This waiver must be completed and submitted at least 2 weeks before the meeting (for our meeting that would be April 12, 2022). Attendees at the Yankee will need to wear a mask indoors. The medical exemption form will be posted on our AAOP website under meeting information for those who need it. The recent data on N95 use to reduce transmission indicates that that transmission is virtually nil if everyone uses an N95. We dentists are used to wearing an N95 and will wear them as need be for our meeting. We will be safe.
It is critical that our members register for our annual scientific meeting to ensure AAOP’s continued financial success. I’m super excited about the program, it has content threads that are appropriate to interest those who are new to the OFP discipline and to long term stalwart members. These threads start with the pre-conference programs, run through the main program offerings (organized into half day programs in TMD, headache, neuropathic pain, and sleep medicine) and continue into the breakfast and lunch sessions. I believe everyone will find this a satisfying program worthy of our first in-person meeting since being recognized as Specialty. Thank you, Dr Marcela Romero and the 2022 Scientific Meeting Committee, Ken, and Laura for all your hard work in planning the great curriculum for the meeting.
For the remainder of this President’s message, I want to relate what we’ve been working on to enhance name recognition for the AAOP and what our members do. I’ll also review the highlights of our AAOP Council meeting held Nov 14, 2021.
Over the past two months your AAOP President and AAOP President-elect have reached out to the respective Presidents of our sister organizations in Pain and Sleep Medicine, such as American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), AA of Neurology, AA of Otolaryngology, America Thoracic Society, the AADSM, and the AACP to promote cooperation and joint activities in support of our shared interests. The response has been good from most of these organizations with result that the Executive Director (ED) of AAOP will continue negotiations with the respective EDs of these organizations. We need to have open communications with each of these organization to best promote the interests of our membership nationally. Ensuring that the members of these organizations understand what the AAOP does and what skills our members have that can add to the care of pain and sleep disorder patients is our goal. Ultimately, it’s all about improving access to care for OFP patients from which everyone benefits.
The new AAOP Executive Director contract was approved by the council and signed Dec 27, 2021. It will be in effect until Dec 31, 2025
The mentorship committee leadership is also evolving. Dr Seema Kurup will be taking over as Co-Chair then Chair of the committee from Dr Mary Haigler. They will be recruiting new mentors and mentees over the next 2 months. This program has been a great success and will continue to be so. It is important though that we understand what the program is for. It is designed to help new less-experienced practitioners make a connection with someone with more practice experience. The goal is to make the path easier for new practitioners to expand the scope of care for their practice to include OFP services. The mentors are not providing training in Orofacial Pain but are relating their practice experience for providing care for OFP patients. The program does include case reviews to promote the interchange of practice experience and explain management principles for specific types of OFP patients.
Dr Ghabi Kaspo has accepted an appointment to serve chair of the Professional Relations Committee. Dr Kaspo has, in his recent 7 years as a Council member, consistently championed enhanced relationships with our Sister Academies and other Pain and Sleep Medicine organizations. He is the perfect person for this leadership position.
The council has decided to create a new committee dedicated to On-Line Learning. Dr Bob Mier, AAOP President-elect, will be recruiting volunteer-members for this committee. One of the critical tasks of this committee will be to work with the web-site committee members to encourage more content for the CE offerings on our website. This is of critical importance to ensure the AAOP website is at the top of one’s “hits” when searching about OFP subjects.
The AAOP, as the guardian for our new specialty, must have a protocol for the development and approval of position papers. Should a designated committee be responsible for creating the paper and approving it, or should a separate group do the peer review and approval of the result? Does an AAOP position paper need to be voted on by our membership? Should our current Guidelines be considered a position paper? These questions need answers.
We currently have a joint position paper with the AAOMR (Radiology) on Imaging for the TMJ undergoing review. We need to answer the above questions to expedite the approval of this important paper co-authored by AAOP members Dr Ghabi Kapos and Dr Rich Cohen along with their AAOMR co-authors.
The Pre-Doctoral Education committee was granted JADA approval for publication of it’s New Curriculum Standards for Teaching Temporomandibular Disorders in Dental Schools: A Commentary. Dr Hong Chen is the first author on this important publication. This publication is in response to another AAOP publication from the AAOP task force for the creation of TMD Predoctoral education standards. This task force was formed in response to CODA’s establishment of the new accreditation standard (2-24K) in dental pre-doctoral education for TMD which goes into effect July 1, 2022. This core curriculum guideline, Temporomandibular Disorders Core Curriculum for Pre-Doctoral Dental Education: Recommendations from the American Academy of Orofacial Pain was accepted for publication by the Journal of Orofacial Pain and Headache on August 27, 2021
Dr (Lt Commander) James Hawkins led a team of authors from the AAOP Resident Training Committee to publish a paper in Orofacial Pain and Headache concerning credentialing and certifying proficiency for orofacial pain residents entitled Entrustable Professional Activity in Postgraduate Orofacial Pain Programs. (J of Orofacial Pain and Headache: Volume 34, Number #3, 2020)
Keep on the lookout for new CE offerings listed on the AAOP website. One example is the Tuft University Dental School CE offerings for OFP and TMD which is open to AAOP members. This can involve their weekly Wednesday morning OFP seminars by various pain management champions or their quarterly Saturday morning case presentations involving Tuft’s, MGH, and Rutgers OFP residents.
Members of the AAOP’s Access to Care Committee (ATC) have been working “behind the scenes” with CMS on CPT codes for OFP. The CMS is the appropriate target for this work as success there will have a national effect as Medicare sets the prior authorization standards for other medical insurances to follow.
Our ATC is continuing to move forward with a program to promote OFP at the state level, which is our AAOP’s primary vision goal. This program includes sample letters for use by our members to submit to state insurance commissioners, state dental and medical boards as well as specific congressional and executive leaders. The goal: “To promote increased access to care for OFP patients to qualified OFP practitioners.” We believe, as a Council, that the best value for time and effort spent by our members will be, as direct constituents. Our members will/should directly lobby their congressional representatives and governors individually. Most influential will be recruitment of TMD/OFP patients to submit letters as constituents. These letters from patients were most important in the campaigns to gain medical insurance coverage in the states of Mn., Vt., and Wisconsin. A package of letters, PPT presentations, and OFP information packages to get the OFP word out to medical and dental state boards, associations, insurance companies to include state commissioners, and health profession schools will be sent to our members and posted on the AAOP website with a start date of March 30th. This will be after the ABOP is approved by the ADA as the certifying board for our Orofacial Pain Specialty board-certification examinations.
Thanks, and let’s look forward to AAOP 2022!!
Sincerely, Jeff
Jeffry R Shaefer DDS MS MPH
President, American Academy of Orofacial Pain
