From the Director: DO-Touch.NET Activity

I hope this newsletter finds you well and that your summer has been full of activity, fun, and some rest. This summer we have been very active within DO-Touch.NET at the A.T. Still Research Institute and I am excited to tell you about our work.

In July, we hosted the first Advancing Skills in Osteopathy (ASO) CME course for DO-Touch.NET members. In previous years, advanced palpation training was part of the DO-Touch.NET annual meeting. This year, due to network growth, we held the annual membership meeting prior to the AAO Convocation and expanded the palpation training into a full ASO course. Clinicians from across the North American continent attended this dynamic, lab-intensive course and DO-Touch.NET members received 20 hours of CME at no cost. Please see the following page for more details about the program.

For several years, we have wanted to expand DO-Touch.NET’s research into the field of pediatrics. During the March 2016 AAO Convocation, a group of members expressed a desire to begin this research endeavor. Since then we have held monthly video conferences to facilitate this process and in May, DO-Touch.NET members formed the Pediatric Research Alliance (PRA) within the Network. As a result of sharing experiences, publications, electronic medical record screen shots, and information about potential outcome measures and methodologies, a direction for research has been developed and instrumentation has been purchased for pilot testing as a potential measure of cranial morphology. This is an exciting and very important development within the Network. For more details regarding the PRA, see page 3 of this newsletter and contact our Network Manager, Lisa Norman, if you are interested in getting involved in OMM pediatric research.

We also hosted four Clinician Researcher Development Program interns this summer. In addition to their independent research, they participated in the double entry of data collected from participant questionnaires from our utilization and effectiveness study for quality assurance. This is an extensive data set and while much was accomplished, we are not expecting the data to be fully cleaned and ready for analysis until the end of the year.

The adverse event study continues to be in the data collection phase. The summer unfortunately brought more rest than activity with this study. While we have met our goal of recruiting 50 members to participate in the study, the patient recruitment and participant completion rate has been too slow. Consequently, we have requested an extension from our funders, the American Academy of Osteopathy, so we can complete this study. It is critical that all active members renew their commitment to complete their part of this study. In the next few weeks, we will be holding four very important webinars to identify and help eliminate barriers that may be delaying the study completion. Please do everything you can to attend only ONE of these sessions! Dates are listed on the back of this newsletter. Individual dates will be arranged if you are unable to attend one of the group sessions.