I am truly honored to be nominated as President-Elect of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. The Academy represents to me the very best that medicine has to offer. Our colleagues and staff work tirelessly to help us prevent, diagnose, and treat eye diseases and visual impairment. Being President-Elect in 2019 and President in 2020 would be a wonderful opportunity to serve our patients, society, and profession by promoting our mission of preserving sight, especially in the auspicious year 2020. As one of three ophthalmologists on a 15-person committee for the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine), I helped address the current state and burden of vision loss and eye disease in the U.S. and helped draft recommendations to improve the population’s eye health. I saw how vital it is for us to be involved in the population’s vision health crisis as leaders, educators, patient advocates, researchers, and physicians. I am privileged to have served as the first AAO Director of the H. Dunbar Hoskins, Jr, MD, Center for Quality Eye Care, where I was involved in the development of the IRIS® Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight), which helps us improve the care of patients through knowledge gained from our clinical practices. Work with the IRIS Registry is beginning to contribute solutions to the problems of managing common eye diseases and conditions. As time goes on, this dive into Big Data will help improve the quality of care not only for our individual patients, but also for society.
I have been very fortunate to have several leadership roles in the Academy as chair of the Interspecialty Education Committee, chair of the Knowledge Base Glaucoma Panel, Trustee-at-large, Quality of Care Secretary, and co-chair of the David E.I. Pyott Glaucoma Education Center. In addition, I have been active in other professional societies as Council Chair for the American Ophthalmological Society, chair of the American Glaucoma Society (AGS) Annual Program Meeting Committee and chair of the AAO/AGS Subspecialty Day meeting, and President of Women in Ophthalmology. For over two decades, I have been an active faculty member of the Glaucoma Division at the Stein Eye Institute in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where I have also been privileged to serve as Vice-Chair of Academic Affairs for the Department of Ophthalmology. Over the years, I have given numerous lectures around the world on glaucoma, analyses with Medicare databases, applications of epidemiologic and biostatistical principles, Big Data, and the functional impacts of eye diseases on individuals. In 2015, I was honored to be the 72nd Jackson Memorial Lecturer at the Annual Meeting.
During my career, I have witnessed the amazing innovations and contributions our members have made to our patients and our profession, and I remain optimistic and enthusiastic about our future. If afforded the honor of serving, I will work tirelessly to help our members through Academy programs achieve our mission to protect sight and empower lives.