Dear GAAPP Community,

As summer approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, not only does the concentration of pollen in the air increase, but so does our busyness in light of the numerous awareness days and events of the coming months.

The important World Asthma Day and IPCRG World Conference are coming up in May, and our annual Scientific Meeting in July with this year’s upcoming Board Elections is fast approaching. We will provide you with more details in the coming weeks.

Best wishes,

Tonya A. Winders
GAAPP President 

Gundula Koblmiller
GAAPP Executive Director

Susanne Hintringer
GAAPP Global Outreach & Education Coordinator

Save the Date

GAAPP Scientific Meeting

Virtual Meeting

July 9th, 2021
7 am EDT = 1 pm CEST = 11 pm AUST
Duration: 4 hours

After that:
Annual General Meeting
and
Election of the Board

Upcoming Events

April 29th is World Immunology Day!

On this year’s World Immunology Day, GAAPP will launch an awareness campaign about Eosinophil-Driven Diseases (EDDs), also known as Type 2 Inflammation.

Type 2 Inflammation is when the immune system overreacts in response to an allergen, developing breathing problems and other diseases. Many diseases, including but not limited to asthma and atopic eczema, can be considered type 2 inflammatory diseases.

Despite their connections to many different diseases, many people aren’t aware of type 2 inflammation.This is best seen through how researchers have understood eosinophils, an immune cell involved in triggering type 2 inflammation. Eosinophils were traditionally dismissed in medical science.

But new research has brought a paradigm shift challenging this assumption. Researchers now understand that eosinophils have a wide range of jobs throughout the body. They’re involved in lung disease, bowel disease, muscle disease, and are important in developing immunity against diseases.

GAAPP_World_asthma_day

May 5th is World Asthma Day!

This year’s theme is “Uncovering Asthma Misconceptions”. The theme provides a call to action to address common widely held myths and misconceptions concerning asthma that prevent persons with asthma from enjoying optimal benefit from the major advances in the management of this condition.

Common misconceptions surrounding asthma include:

  • Asthma is a childhood disease; individuals will grow out of it as they age.
  • Asthma is infectious.
  • Asthma sufferers should not exercise.
  • Asthma is only controllable with high dose steroids.

GINA would like to address these myths and misconceptions by inviting our you to submit a short video that addresses and corrects a misconception of asthma commonly held in your country or region.  Videos should be no longer than 15 seconds in duration. For more details on their format please contact us for an example and a draft outline. Email your ideas and videos to : k.rurey@ginasthma.org (the deadline for their submission is March 30, 2021). A compilation of addressable myths and misconceptions about asthma from around the world will be assembled and posted on social media to increase awareness of asthma.

IPCRG World Conference

Both GAAPP and IPCRG believe in the importance of working locally in primary care and collaborating globally to improve respiratory health.

The 10th IPCRG World Conference will be held on Thursday 6 to Saturday 8 May 2021 as a fully virtual event.

GAAPP will be present at the event with a virtual booth. The programme covers best practice in primary care management of chronic respiratory diseases, tobacco dependence, updates on COVID-19, long/post COVID-19 and COVID-19 Vaccination, amongst other topics. The delegate fee is €50 for patient representatives. Participants will receive access to all materials for the duration of 6 months Please find the full programme and registration link here

Asking a Favour

We would be very grateful if you could very briefly and concisely (maximum 4 sentences!) summarize how your organization benefits in practice from being in a GAAPP member organization.

GAAPP wants to grow in order to bring our common mission forward. For this reason, we are currently working on the subpage of our website where we highlight for interested potential member organizations what the benefits of membership are.

Your short text will then be shown on our website for this purpose. Please send your short statements to Susanne (shintringer@gaapp.org).

Thank you in advance for your time and support!

Reminders

Screenshot Website

Check out our Newly Designed Website!

We have recently launched our newly designed Website, which is now available in all languages!

We have also added subdomains that are now easily and directly accessible with language.gaapp.org (for example: fr.gaapp.org, bs.gaapp.org, ar.gaapp.org, etc.). All Member Organizations are mentioned and introduced here.

We would like to thank all of you who have already checked whether the information concerning your Organization is still correct. For those who have not had the time to so so yet: it is never too late to send us an email if any changes are necessary!

Join our Facebook Group!

Our public Facebook channel is aimed at a broader population to create increased awareness of our common concerns. With the newly created, private Facebook group, we intent to create a space in which we not only provide you with information tailored to your specific needs, but where informal exchange is also facilitated.

Access to the Group is limited to GAAPP Members- Click here to join!

GAAPP_Community

Follow our Twitter List!

Benefit from seeing all the Twitter activities of all GAAPP members at any time in just one click by simply following our Twitter list!

This way, we can not only support each other, but also give patient-relevant content a wider reach! Follow our Twitter List by clicking here.

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