OPAF PSA: O&P HISTORY/AWARENESS OPPORTUNITY

OPAF PSA: O&P HISTORY/AWARENESS OPPORTUNITY

Jeffrey S. Reznick

6/30/2004

The Orthotic and Prosthetic Assistance Fund (OPAF) offers the following
call from the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM)
( <URL Redacted>) as a public service announcement
(PSA) that helps to fulfill OPAF's official representation of O&P in
community and philanthropic circles. OPAF aims primarily to enable
individuals with physical disabilities - especially those served by
members of the U.S. orthotics and prosthetics community - to enjoy the
rewards of personal achievement, physical fitness, and social
interaction. In achieving this goal, the Fund also seeks to help raise
public awareness of the benefits that individuals with physical
disabilities receive from physical activity, orthotics, and prosthetics.
Complete information about OPAF is available at <URL Redacted>.

This call will be of particular interest to members of the O&P community
who, like OPAF, are engaged in promoting greater public awareness of the
past, present, and future of O&P.

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As the nation's official museum of health and medicine since 1862, the
National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) seeks to identify,
collect, and preserve important resources to achieve a broad agenda of
innovative exhibitions, educational programs, and scientific, historical
and medical research. To this end, and to inspire interest in personal
and public health and promoting understanding of medicine -- past,
present, and future -- the NMHM would be delighted to receive donations
of watershed technology from the O&P field as well as examples from the
profession that represent the true breadth of O&P evolution since its
earliest beginnings in the United States.

A direct benefactor of past and present technology donated to the NMHM
will be the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which in 2006 will
be celebrating 100 years of medical product evolution through a
commemorative exhibit dedicated to this subject and the overall work of
the agency since passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. O&P
components that the O&P community sees as representing watershed
technological developments in the field will be particularly welcome for
inclusion in this exhibit, as tribute to the evolution of O&P during the
past one hundred years.

For more information and/or to donate a piece of past or present O&P
history to the NMHM, please contact: Adrianne Noe, Ph.D., Associate
Director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and Director of its
National Museum of Health and Medicine, 6825 16th Street, NW, Bldg. 54,
Washington, DC 20306-6000, Phone: 202-782-2692, Fax: (202) 782-3573,
email: <Email Address Redacted>

For more information about the FDA's planned 2006 exhibition, please
contact either or both of FDA's historians, Suzanne Junod, Ph.D. and
John Swann, Ph.D. via the FDA History Office, HFC-24, Room 12-69,
Rockville, MD 20857, Phone: 301-443-6367, Fax: 301-827-0551, emails:
<Email Address Redacted>
<Email Address Redacted>