Open Line to the President

Marcel Dijkers, PhD, FACRM

Dear Colleagues:

At the midyear meeting of your ACRM Board of Governors on April 15-16, 2007 I was asked, as President-Elect, to give a summary of the initiatives for the organization that I wanted to develop during the 2007-08 year. My response was that I did not want to develop any new ones – the initiatives set into motion by my predecessors, Deborah Wilkerson, MA, Allen Heinemann, PhD, FACRM, Mitchell Rosenthal, PhD, FACRM and Gerben DeJong, PhD, FACRM deserved to be brought to fruition. I listed the following:

• Membership growth and retention, especially by means of increasing the value of membership for our members
  
• Safeguarding of the economic and scientific future of one of our major assets, the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
  
• Enhanced international contacts and collaboration
  
• Course and other opportunities for early career researchers
  
• Maintaining and expanding funding for rehabilitation research from the major government agencies sponsoring research
  
• Growth for our two networking groups, the SCI network and the Measurement and Methodology network, and their transition into a full-fledged special interest group similar to our vibrant Brain Injury ISIG
  

I expect to address progress in all of these areas in my column in this year; the current article focuses on our “international” efforts.
The late Mitch Rosenthal set this course with the establishment of the International Committee, of which I was the first chairman; it is now chaired quite competently and dynamically by Angela Colantonio, BSc, MSc, PhD. What the committee is charged with is “internationalizing” ACRM and American rehabilitation research. If you read the names of authors of papers published in Archives, and of the institutions they are affiliated with, you are aware that about half originate from outside the USA. That is no coincidence; compared to the situation when I first became an ACRM member in 1982, rehabilitation and rehabilitation research have “exploded” all over the world. Specifically worth mentioning are developments in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Turkey. These countries have growing organizations comparable to our AAPM&R, AOTA, APTA, ASHA and ARN, and in some instances associations comparable to ACRM. They have established or significantly expanded and upgraded journals for rehabilitation research (Clinical Rehabilitation, Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine), and engage in rehabilitation research of a level of sophistication that often equals our own, and not infrequently exceeds it. While back in the 1970s and 80s not being aware of what happened overseas was not a great disadvantage to ACRM members, that is no longer the case. American rehabilitation experts and rehabilitation researchers need to be aware of what is going on in foreign countries, and ACRM ought to be the forum at which American and foreign experts exchange information and set up collaborations.

The International Committee, with a mixture of “native-born” and foreign-born USA-based members who have extensive international contacts, as well as foreigners who are ACRM members, has taken a number of initiatives, including:

• Creation of a database of international, regional and national organizations dedicated to some aspect of rehabilitation
  
• Semi-official representation of ACRM at foreign meetings, complete with a special brochure aiming to introduce ACRM
  
• In collaboration with the Program Committee, enhancing the input by non-US experts to our annual meeting’s courses, plenaries and other presentations
  
• A “host” system for foreigners attending our 2007 meeting, assisting them to meet members with similar interests and otherwise helping them to get maximum value out of their attendance
  
• A regular column in the newsletter highlighting rehabilitation and rehabilitation research in a selected foreign country. (See the contribution on Rehabilitation International in this issue, page 7)
  

When as vice-president I could exercise the prerogative of selecting the city in which the annual meeting during my presidency was to be held, I gladly contributed to these efforts by selecting Toronto. This is the first time ever that ACRM’s meeting is held outside the United States, and nearby but different-as-well-as-similar Canada was an easy choice. We will meet October 15-19, 2008, joining with our partners in the American Society for Neurorehabilitation as well as with the Ontario Rehabilitation Research Advisory Network (ORRAN), ACRM’s counterpart in Ontario. Some ORRAN members who are also ACRM members have joined our Program committee, which is developing a meeting program that will highlight issues in Canadian health care and rehabilitation.

The effort to infuse all program components with an international element will carry over from the last two years. We are hoping to attract large numbers of colleagues from Quebec and other Canadian provinces, as well as those from western Europe and Asia who in the years past have found their way to our conference. The Program and International committees promise to present a scientific and social program that will continue and enhance exchanges and collaborations that benefit our members, whether located in the USA or elsewhere, and non-members from all over the world. I for one am looking forward to our first “overseas” excursion, and look forward to seeing you in Toronto.

Some Practical Issues:

• Toronto may be foreign, but its distance to many parts of the U.S. is smaller than that to Hawaii or Alaska, or even points within the continental U.S. Toronto has excellent airline connections from all major US cities.
  
• New U.S. regulations require all citizens traveling outside the country to have a passport. NOW is the time to get one, or to make sure your passport will still be valid in October 2008. U.S. citizens do not need visas for Canada.
  
• If you plan to pay part of your travel with U.S. government grant funds, you should be aware there may be limitations on expenditure of funds on foreign travel. Contact your project officer NOW.
  
• Similarly, U.S. government employees may need special permission to travel outside the U.S. Check with your supervisor or other contact person as to your limitations.
  
• Since we selected Toronto as our meeting city, the Canadian dollar has flexed its muscle, and for the first time in over two decades is worth more than the American dollar. Be aware that registration charges are payable in U.S. dollars, and that ACRM has negotiated a room rate with the conference hotel, the Delta Chelsea, that even after conversion to Canadian dollars is much lower than the rate we enjoyed in 2007 in Washington DC.
  
• •   If our meeting is as successful as the one in Washington, it behooves everyone planning to attend to make hotel reservations as soon as the preliminary program arrives in our mail boxes. In Washington we filled up the room block, and some members had to find space in neighboring hotels - a good problem to have, for us as an organization.
  

Marcel Dijkers, PhD, FACRM
President
American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
6801 Lake Plaza Drive, Suite b-205
Indianapolis Indiana 46220