From the MWLA President: Making an Impact

I am very grateful for the opportunity to be President of the Midwest Chapter of the National Lipid Association. During this year, the Midwest Chapter made a commitment to support the activities of both the NLA and the Foundation of the NLA. Because of that commitment, we have chosen topics for the Lipid Spin that align with the great work of the Foundation and address the timely topic of familial hypercholesterolemia. This common disorder is frequently undiagnosed, and therefore appropriate family screening is not undertaken, putting many young individuals at risk for premature heart disease. This issue of the Lipid Spin has been authored by several members of the Midwest Chapter, and I think you will find the articles enlightening and helpful to your practice. I am extremely grateful to all of the authors for their commitment to the NLA as well as their high quality submissions for articles in the Lipid Spin. We are striving to have many other local ractitioners who are interested in Clinical Lipidology enhance their professional satisfaction and experience by encouraging them to become members of the Midwest Chapter. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to James Underberg, MD, and Robert Wild, MD, PhD, for the immense amount of time and effort they put into reviewing all of the submissions for the Lipid Spin to make sure that the articles are appropriate and scientifically correct.

I would like to take this opportunity to discuss a couple of other initiatives beyond the Lipid Spin that hopefully will be completed this year through the Midwest Chapter. The first is an idea that was brought forth by Carl Orringer, MD, who suggested a quarterly newsletter that could be sent to referring physicians by members of our organization. The newsletter would be an update or a review of a recent trial or lipid topic, which would be sent out by chapter members to their referring physicians as a service to the referring physicians. The newsletter would serve to educate and to increase visibility for members of the NLA to their referring doctors. This will establish the expertise of NLA members within their local communities in addition to disseminating important information that will translate into better patient care. We are very excited about this initiative and appreciate Dr. Orringer's input regarding authorship and distribution. Secondly, in order to enhance our membership, reward those who have worked hard within the chapter, and support the Foundation, we are planning to have our first annual awards evening in Spring 2013. This event will be open to all members of the NLA and will include dinner on the Odyssey cruise ship on Lake Michigan. We expect this to be a very enjoyable event that will allow our colleagues to mingle as well as to generate contributions to the Foundation. It will also allow us to recognize those members of the chapter who have committed a great deal of time to the NLA but may not have received the recognition they so greatly deserve. We would like to invite all members of the NLA to join us for this fun evening, and further details on the exact date of the Odyssey cruise will be forthcoming. I am grateful, again, for the privilege of being President of the Midwest Chapter during this year, and I look forward with great anticipation to our upcoming meeting in New Orleans in February 2013.