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Issue: Issue 2 2006
March 01, 2006
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Bone and Joint Decade enters second half

Decade officials and patient advocates united to plan worldwide musculoskeletal education and advocacy efforts for the next five years.

Issue: Issue 2 2006

National and international leaders within the Bone and Joint Decade effort convened in Ottawa to acknowledge their progress five years into the decade effort, but also the challenges ahead.

Cy Frank, MD [photo]
Cy Frank

“The major outcome of the meeting was that there should be an international focus on musculoskeletal education,” Cy Frank, MD, scientific director of the Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis in Calgary, Canada, told Orthopaedics Today. “It is not being done well or consistently around the world. Some best practices were shared, and there was agreement to make this a focus going forward.”

The 160 delegates attending the Bone and Joint Decade (BJD) World Network Conference — including two representatives from each member country, 20 International Steering Committee members and a number of patient advocates — set international standards for musculoskeletal pain and hip fracture care and prevention. They also established guidelines for educating health professionals on musculoskeletal conditions and reviewed strategies for reducing road traffic accidents and their impact, according to Hazel Wood, BJD coordinator for eastern Canada.

In focus: International issues

Attendees agreed that international synergy is vital for musculoskeletal research on injury prevention, road traffic accident prevention and better treatment of hip fractures.

“This will save lives and help prevent disability from this huge burden of illness worldwide,” particularly in countries with fewer traffic laws and resources to help patients with traumatic injuries, Frank said.

The International Steering Committee also pledged time and resources to complete the international standards, with plans to launch them at the 2006 BJD World Network Conference in Durban, South Africa, on Oct. 31-Nov. 4.

Veronica Wadey, MD, a University of Calgary Training Program graduate and second-year orthopaedic fellow, presented an implementation plan for enhancing worldwide musculoskeletal education to be used as a model worldwide.

In addition to creating more educational programs throughout the world, attendees placed research at the top of the initiatives list for the next five years.

“Research is very important and we have to raise awareness about the burden … to increase the attention for research and musculoskeletal conditions,” said BJD International Steering Committee member Mieke Hazes, MD, PhD, of the Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, Netherlands.

The European Union already placed musculoskeletal research on the seventh framework of its agenda, Hazes said in the World Network Conference welcoming address.

Where the BJD is now

Attendees also reviewed recent accomplishments. “Most of the countries have some kind of program [to raise] awareness for the growing burden of musculoskeletal conditions,” Hazes said.

For example, Japan offers a comic book to school-age children illustrating the benefits of maintaining good musculoskeletal health, Hungary distributes a series of patient education booklets, and Australia conducted a national consensus meeting to develop a business plan for attacking musculoskeletal health problems, said Armin U. Kuder, Esq., a BJD International Steering Committee member.

Since the 2004 BJD World Network Conference, the BJD Decade has received support from more governments, now bringing the total to 60 countries, Kuder said in his annual report. The Decade also recently added Lebanon, Malaysia and Kenya to the list of National Action Networks (NANs), which now totals 59, and boasts 95 National Action Coordinators, including some from participating countries without full networks yet.

Receiving recognition in 2005

“In the first few years, it was a struggle to get international attention for the BJD,” Kuder said. “In 2005, we changed that entirely. We are now recognized on the international stage.”

In fact, working with national and regional organizations, Decade organizers convinced the European Parliament to include musculoskeletal health in its policies and planning.

In other 2005 developments, the Bone and Joint Decade Committee spent the past year improving its Web site and planning a multilayered youth portal focused on young patients with musculoskeletal arthritis and traumatic injuries. It also added a BJD faculty recommended reading list and a lecture series, available on the BJD Web portal.

“The energy that’s been expended in this area should, in the future, produce some really significant changes in treatments, prevention and — hopefully someday — cures,” Kuder said.

The BJD and Gelita AG are also offering the Gelita Health Initiative scholarship, which grants 25,000 euros for cartilage research, specifically in osteoarthritis, he said.

“All of this is part of what we have tried to create, which is a unified message, so that when people think of bone and joints, arthritis, hip replacements … it’s all part of the greater message of musculoskeletal science,” Kuder said.

Patient Advocacy Meeting

About 50 international patient delegates united for the BJD Patient Advocacy Meeting in October and then participated in the network conference.

“The patients’ meeting … was very successful and effective,” Hazes said. “Patients are now involved much more [in the Decade effort]. We are going to move people to action, and that raises cooperation between the patients and the health professionals.”

Wood said the Canadian NAN also set its own objectives for the second half of the decade, including implementing Wadey’s plan at Canadian universities and working with the government to improve orthopaedic surgical care and shorten patient waiting lists. The Canadian network is also partnering with the U.S. NAN to produce Young Investigator Workshops each year to train new researchers.

Finally, the Canadian NAN will make a concerted effort to significantly reduce patient waiting times for many orthopaedic procedures. [See related story on page 6.]

“We aim to develop ‘knowledge networks’ … and pair a leading orthopaedic surgeon and a deputy minister to develop provincial teams to find provincial and federal solutions to waiting lists for orthopaedic surgery,” Wood told Orthopaedics Today.

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