Call for Workshops and Presentations

We are looking for great participation from our CAEs and CREs at this year’s conference, in both plenary sessions and workshops. The deadline for getting your application in to facilitate a workshop or speak at the conference is February 28, 2011.

Click here for
Call for Workshops and
Call for Presentations

CAll For Abstracts

You will notice an exciting change to this year’s Call for Abstracts. In the past, we have sought abstracts for posters on research projects. This year we are actively seeking out research on a wider range of areas to reflect the expanded scope of work that respiratory educators are engaged in (including asthma, COPD, smoking cessation, allergy and pulmonary rehabilitation). As long as it is related to your work in respiratory care, we are interested in including it!  

Also for the first time this year, we are offering you the ability to highlight your respiratory education program, activities and tools. 

Update

We are beginning to work on the spring edition of our Currents supplement in Allergic Living magazine. We are looking for CAEs & CREs who want to participate in the Q&A section, contribute True/False questions or submit ideas/material for the Kids Corner. Also, if you have any story ideas, please feel free to send them along. You don't have to be a great writer to participate. We do have access to the amazing writers and editors at Allergic Living magazine to help us sound great. It's your knowledge that we want to access, not your writing skills!

Contact Cheryl Connors to participate. cconnors@cnrchome.net

McKesson Canada

Job Posting

McKesson Canada is now looking for English-speaking CAEs and CREs who are available to work full or part-time. Work from home is also now an option.

If you are interested in this position, please apply online at www.mckesson.ca

Click here for ad.

ASED 10 Planning Underway

This year's conference, "Celebrating our Past: Embracing our Future" is taking place November 10-12, 2011 at the Hilton Lac-Leamy in Gatineau, Quebec (about 10 minutes from downtown Ottawa). As this is our very special 10th Anniversary Conference, we want to make sure that the program that we develop best meets the unique continuing education needs of the respiratory educator community.
 
The ASED 10 Planning Committee will be meeting on February 5th to start working on putting this year's conference program together. We are looking for ideas for the conference.

Please email your suggestions for topics for either workshops or plenary sessions to: cconnors@cnrchome.net. (You can also send along suggestions for great speakers that you think our delegates would like to see.)

Update from the Board of Directors

CNRC’s new competency-based Board also met for the first time on December 10th 2010. Key issues identified by the Board were the ongoing fundraising/ financial challenges, government relations and governance. The Board has created a governance committee to look at how we can work to build leadership of the organization as we move forward. Past President, Dr. Ken Chapman, agreed to come out of retirement to lead the organization over the next year as we transition fully to our new Board structure. There may have been some arm-twisting involved but we are deeply grateful that Dr. Chapman cares so much about the work of the respiratory educators to continue to volunteer his time to the organization.

Dr. Harold Kim, who has been a tireless and passionate leader for the organization for the past four years, will move to the position of Past President and remain in a leadership role on the Executive Committee. (We have a hard time letting our outstanding volunteer leaders leave us!) We are also fortunate that Dr. Robert Cowie has agreed to continue to serve as Vice-President and Heather Sharpe, RN, MN, CRE will continue to play a key role on the Executive Committee in her role as Chair of the Certification Management Committee.

2011 will see the development of an updated strategic plan for the organization as we work with our new directors. We are particularly pleased with the new ideas and energy that our directors from the business/corporate, association and government world bring to the Board, along with equal representation between CAE/CRE directors and physicians.

Annual General Meeting

I wanted to thank you all for sending in your proxy forms for December's Annual General Meeting. We were able to make quorum and proceed with the meeting.

Click here to view the minutes of the December 10, 2010 AGM.

The 2011 Annual General Meeting will take place at the conference in November.

Update on Food Labelling Regulations

Allergic Living magazine, Anaphylaxis Canada, the Canadian Celiac Association and the Allergy Asthma Information Association continue to work with the food allergy and celiac communities regarding the lobbying efforts to urge the federal government to approve the proposed food labelling regulations.  As you may have seen last weekend, several media outlets reported that the beer industry has come out in strong opposition to the proposed regulatory changes. This opposition by a powerful private interest group threatens to derail final approval of the proposed changes by the federal government.
 
Community stakeholders have been waiting for 2 1/2 years for these regulations to be enacted – and this is on top of the 10-year campaign for such changes that preceded it. If you are also concerned that your clients with food allergies will continue to be harmed if these life-saving food labelling regulations are not passed, you can demonstrate your  support for food labelling changes. Anaphylaxis Canada has asked supporters to do the following:

1. Please call Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office at (613) 992-4211 as soon as possible.
   
   
2. Please join Allergic Living's write-in campaign:
   http://www.allergicliving.com/petitions/food-labelling/
   
   
3. Contact your Member of Parliament. Click here to find your local MP:
   http://www2.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/compilations/houseofcommons/
   memberbypostalcode.aspx?menu=hoc