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Bryan Wolynski, OD, FAAO, is a NECO graduate and completed a residency in primary care at NOVA. He is the chief technology officer at Lighthouse Guild in New York, New York. He oversees technology resources and initiatives for the organization and develops strategies to bring the latest technological advancements to people with blindness or visual impairment.

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The smart home market is expected to reach $121.73 billion by 2022.3 With these speculations, even stores like Home Depot now have a separate smart home device section. It is estimated that by 2020, there will be over 26 billion connected devices.

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Cecelia Koetting, OD, FAAO, DIPABO speaks with Optometry Times about the new optometry program and integrated family time in the upcoming 2024 EnVision Summit

EnVision Summit 2024: Family time and eye care take center stage

EnVision Summit, already known for its unique integration of the family unit into its programs, just got more expansive this year with the addition of an optometry program. Cecelia Koetting, OD, FAAO, DIPABO, sat down with 

to chat about this year's event, running from February 16 to 19.

: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Hi, everyone. Today I'm here with Cecelia Koetting, one of the co-chairs of the 2024 EnVision Summit Optometry Program. Welcome, Dr. Koetting, good to see you, as always.

 Of course. So first, can you tell me what drew you to help kickstart the EnVision Summit Optometry Program?

 I actually was brought in by a friend of mine, who had been speaking with Bonnie [An Henderson, MD, cofounder of EnVision Summit] at the last EnVision Summit, and Jen Lyerly, [OD,] who's a fellow optometrist, and she went last year and really was very overwhelmed by how amazing the conference was, and wanted to see how we could get optometry more involved. Jennifer Lyerly wasn't able to really devote the time this year to help build up the program, so she brought myself and a couple other people into chat with Bonnie. So here we are, 6 months later, where we're really starting to get this built up.

 Fantastic. Can you share what it is about the meeting that attracted you?

 The meeting itself is inclusive, it's inclusive of family and I think that that's really interesting. It's very different, as opposed to many of the conferences that we go to that are in these really fun places (such as Puerto Rico, where we're going) [that] unfortunately don't lend themselves to family really getting to spend time with us as the doctors while we're in class. So EnVision is actually open to family. If kids want to come in and hang out with us while we're in the lecture hall, they're invited. Family members are allowed to come to the meals and spend time with us. So I thought that was just a really different, unique vibe that EnVision offers. Yeah, absolutely. It makes it very welcoming, very cozy, very homey. Yeah, and now I want optometry to be part of it. We really want it to be where it's cohesive, not just optometry, ophthalmology. Eventually as time goes on, that's kind of more of the pipeline dream, but right now we've got it so that all classes on the MD track and the OD track are actually both going to be COPE and CME approved, so that everybody is encouraged to criss-cross and go to whatever course sounds interesting.

 Yeah, I think that's a fantastic idea. So you're participating in the hot topics rapid-fire session on coolest cases. Can you give us a little sneak peek on what you're bringing to the table?

 Yeah, so we got all of the 5 female optometrists that are there lecturing, including myself. We will be kind of going through a smorgasbord because if you've looked at the lineup, we have women who are top of their game in so many different respects that it's going to be fun. We're going to be looking at nevuses and melanomas, we're going to be talking about diplopia. I know you don't love it, but believe me, it'll be fun. We're also getting into some retinal issues as well. So again, we're just kind of going all over the place here with it.

 That sounds so cool. I'm so excited to hear more. Do you have any other panels or programs that you're not participating in that you're particularly excited to see?

 Yeah, since I got to have a little hand and how this went, I kind of was like, "Well, what makes me interested?" or pulling people from other places I've seen that I think are phenomenal speakers and women that I think, again, are just able to deliver this great content and really make it useful for us. So both Dr [Carolyn] Majcher and [Sherrol] Reynolds are going to be there speaking about retina and updating us on what's changing with geographic atrophy and diagnosis and treatment. I'm really excited to hear them talk about that. The other one, which is completely left field, actually, is Dr Jackie Theis and Sara Etheredge, who is actually an occupational therapist. I actually heard them in Ireland do a live panel with a patient where they brought the patient in to do traumatic brain injury assessment and neurological assessment, and then also looking at it from an occupational therapist direction, and figuring out why this patient was having so much trouble. It's just a really neat application of things that we can do, that we may not otherwise be doing. So, if you can't tell, I'm really excited to get to learn from them again.

 Absolutely, I mean, it sounds like there's a lot to learn about that. They're such rock stars, so it'll be so cool.

 So kind of turning away from education and moving towards extracurriculars, are there any elements outside of the education portion that you're eager to explore?

 Well, yes, I am. The yoga classes which will be taught by yours truly. Occasionally you guys have maybe heard that that's one of the things they do. I've taught before at some other conferences, and I was happy enough to find a home for time for me to lead classes both for the optometrists and family. So there is adult yoga on Saturday, Sunday morning, and then there's family yoga on Monday. Friday, I will be hanging out with the kiddos and doing young adult yoga.

 That sounds so, so fun. I'm a little jealous, but it'll be great. Is there anything else that you'd like to share that we haven't touched on?

 I think it's just going to be a great conference and great collaboration. I'm really excited. If you know, people haven't heard about this yet, go look it up. Come join us. If you don't come this year, definitely come hang out with us next year, because I think this is something that we'd like to see long term grow and turn into something just, like I said, really collaborative between both optometry and ophthalmology.

 Absolutely, and that collaboration is always so, so wonderful. So thank you so much for taking the time to chat today, Dr Koetting, it's been a pleasure.

Cecelia Koetting, OD, FAAO, DIPABO chats with Optometry Times about her role with EnVision Summit's new optometry program and the excitement surrounding the event.

Conference

Bonnie An Henderson, MD, cofounder of EnVision Summit, outlines key takeaways of the family and diversity-centered event

EnVision Summit 2024: Bringing diversity to eye care meetings with Dr Bonnie An Henderson

With EnVision Summit 2024 on the horizon, the meeting's cofounder Bonnie An Henderson, MD, outlines its purpose of family inclusion and highlighting diverse backgrounds. She sat down with 

to share what's new at this year's meeting, running from February 16 to 19 in Puerto Rico.

Hi everyone, I'm here with Bonnie Henderson, program director and cofounder of the EnVision Summit. Welcome Dr Henderson. I'm so glad that you could join us.


Well, thank you so much, Emily. Please feel free to call me Bonnie.


Alright, Bonnie. So first, can you tell us what's new and exciting at the 2024 EnVision Summit?


Absolutely. So first of all, thank you so much for having me on and talking about EnVision. EnVision Summit is very near and dear to my heart, and I'd love to share information about it. So what's new this year at EnVision Summit is that we are focusing [on] what we usually focus on, which is the amazing science and clinical work that ophthalmologists do. Of course, we focus on having a very casual family-friendly environment, but also empowering women leaders and giving them a chance to network with each other, and to be on the podium and to get involved in in clinical trials, to get involved in research projects together. 

So that's what we always do, but what's new and different this year is that we have this amazing optometry program that we're starting. I'm really excited about it because we've had so many questions about, "Can we have a concurrent program that is really focused on educating optometrists?" So I'm excited about it this year, I'm really hoping that it will be well received and well attended. 

We hold it every February, it's Presidents' Day weekend. We hold it in Puerto Rico, so it's nice and warm. Remember, Puerto Rico is a US territory, you don't need a passport, you don't need a visa. We choose Puerto Rico because they've been hit with a lot of natural disasters of the recent past. It's a way to help the community as well, and bring in the colleagues from the continental US, as well as from North, South, and Central Americas as well. So please join us, and we're really looking forward to having you participate in EnVision Summit.


Yeah, that sounds so exciting. So can you tell me a little bit more about how the optometry program came about?


Absolutely. So I've been working with our CME provider, which is Physicians' Education Resource; they're part of MJH Life Sciences, and they have been our accreditation partner for this upcoming year. As part of that company, I met this amazing optometrist Dr Peg Achenbach, and she was instrumental in helping me brainstorm about putting this program together. She really tapped into the fact that a lot of optometrists out there really are looking for this type of education, not only really good science, but also the ability to network with other female optometrists, as well as male optometrists too, and ophthalmologists, together. She really was the one that helped me think through this and figure out what type of program would be very useful and very helpful. She introduced me to Dr Cecilia Koetting and Dr Danica Marrelli, as they are the chairs of the program. They have put together a fantastic program with wonderful speakers and really, really interesting topics. So, I'm thrilled to see this launch. I'm really hoping that people really enjoy the content and really learn from being together.


Absolutely, and what is it about the EnVision Summit that keeps you engaged as program director?


Sure, so there are many meetings out there, so almost every weekend, you can find a ophthalmology or optometry meeting. They are ubiquitous nowadays, so it's easy to find a meeting. However, what I love about EnVision is that it's a very different atmosphere. Not only do you still get really high quality speakers and high quality topics about real ophthalmology and optometry, but you also get it in a really amazing supportive, casual environment. 

I think the the unique aspect about EnVision Summit is that it is really family-friendly, so whether you're male or female, whether you have many kids or no kids, people tend to bring their spouse, their children, and you don't stash them away in the hotel room while you go and listen to the talks. Instead, they're incorporated into the weekend. So all the meals, the breaks, all the events are really welcome to the families of the participants. I think that's really unique because up until now, I think there's been this really big separation between what a meeting is, meaning that you have to see it and sit in in a ballroom or auditorium by yourself, and it's almost always on a weekend, so your spouse, your children are suffering because they're away at home or even if they're with you they're not with you at that time. So it's been really unique to bring them into the entire meeting program so that your children could actually see their mom or their dad on the podium and they can see their role model speaking about ophthalmology, and they really get a sense of what their parent does. 

I think it's inspiring for the children. I think it's really healthy for the parent who's a physician. We start to rethink what our job is, and we talk about work life balance, but this is really living work life balance. It's not just talking the talk, it's really walking the walk. I do hope that medical meetings in the future really evolve into something like this. It shouldn't have this big separation where, you know, before I think a generation or two ago, the spouse usually was a stay-at-home spouse, and they were at home, and they watched the kids. Often times, it was the man who was a physician, and they would go off on to this conference. Well, that's really different now, and I think the caretaker is male or female, and they could be a parent. So I don't think it's reasonable to really expect the patient care provider to actually leave their home, especially on a weekend, and to do this many weekends a year. I think it's much smarter. It lends to job satisfaction and happiness throughout their whole life, their holistic life. I'm hoping that this becomes a healthier way to attend a medical meeting.


Absolutely. I know you just talked a lot about how the EnVision Summit goes above and beyond to be family-friendly. How do you feel like this enriches the experience?


I think it's a really enriching experience to have both the physician program, but also we have a youth program that runs at the same time. We always have a room that's a youth room, or a kid's room, that's connected to the lecture hall. You don't have to be worried about what your child is doing, they literally are right next door. In that room, we have programming specifically for children, it could be as young as toddlers, all the way up until teens. We have things like face-painting and magicians, but we also have things like yoga for teens or life skills, how to give a presentation. Even things like, how do you study for standardized tests, or how do you think about college prepping? Those types of ideas and fun activities are really incorporated, so it allows the age-appropriate youth participant, to be fully engaged and to be excited. 

This is our fifth year, and what I'm thrilled to see is that the children of the physicians, they come back every year, and now they've made friends and they are growing up together. They're so excited to come back to EnVision Summit because they can see their friends. They are having a ball or that weekend, so they're off swimming together, or running around together, or watch the movie together. Then that way, the parents feel really good about the fact that their children and their families are also equally engaged, while they're really educating themselves and continuing medical education. I think it's a really great marriage between the two.


Absolutely, that's so heartwarming. It's just so wholesome, I love it. There's also a huge emphasis on women empowerment at EnVision, how does this translate into the educational program?


Sure. So what you'll notice in this program, if you didn't actually see the faces or the names of the speaker, you would not be able to tell that this would be any different than an American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting, for example. The topics are really relevant, they're fantastic. The talks are amazing, but what you will notice that if you actually do look at the names of the speakers and the program committee, you will notice that the majority of the program committee members are women, and the majority of the speakers are women. What that allows women to do is allows them to actually be on the podium. 

The reason why I think it's really important, in this day and age, you would think, "Well, why don't we meet that need that? Women have plenty of opportunities, it's equal, there's no need for this type of meeting." I've heard that comment many times, but what you realize is when you go to a national meeting or a regional meeting for ophthalmology, you notice that even if it's 50/50 of the people in the audience are men and women, the people who are on the podium, the people who are making the decisions, the people on the program committee, the people on the boards of these organizations, the majority are still men. I love men, I'm married to a man, I have sons, so I have nothing against men, but the idea is it would be great to have equal representation in the board seats and on the podium that are equally represented in the audience. If in the audience you have 50/50 men and women, I think the speaker should also be equal and the leadership should be equal, that way you have equal representation, and you have a diverse opinion about what topic should be given, who should speak. 

I think that having that type of diversity is really, really important to make sure you have a very balanced program. That's really the goal, is to make sure that the program is very reflective [of] what what people want to hear, what people want to learn. The best way to do that is to make sure that the people making the decisions about the topics and the speakers are also coming from diverse backgrounds.


Absolutely. Diverse voices just enrich the content, helps us delve deeper, makes us all better, smarter, happier humans.


So one of the things that I want to highlight is we talk about gender a lot, but really, when you look at the speakers, you'll notice that there's also diversity in backgrounds too. So it's not really just men and women, but you'll see people of different ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, you'll see all different types of people on our speaker list. It's really enriching to have a program and speakers that really reflect the practitioners. I think that that's incredibly important as we move forward in medicine.


Absolutely. I could not agree more. Is there anything else that you'd like to share?


Sure. There's two other new things that I wanted to highlight about this year. One is that Dr Malvina Eydelman ... for ophthalmology, she's the director of the FDA for Ophthalmic Devices, she has put together two incredible new sessions. The first is a leadership session on Friday morning and it's open to everybody. It's entitled, "Breaking That Glass Ceiling," and she's brought in amazing speakers to talk about, what is that glass ceiling, is it still there, how do we break through it? The second is a session on Saturday afternoon with Dr Mildred Olivier and Dr Leslie Jones, and they have put together a session about advancing health equity. It's really focusing on how do we promote health equity for our patients. So what I mean by that is that when we look at the studies that are being done, for example, when we do research studies to look at new medications or new devices, we want to make sure that those studies are done on different populations of patients. So you don't want a study that only looks at people of one particular ethnic background and one race because then the effect and the outcomes of the results of that study may be very different for people from a different ethnic background. When we look at clinical trials, I think it's really, really important that we look at diversity in terms of clinical trials. 

So what that session is doing is to make sure that when clinician scientists like ourselves, we think about what studies should we perform, what do we need to do to investigate new products, new techniques, we also think about who are our patients and how do we make sure that every patient gets equal care? So care should not be delivered based on what is your socioeconomic class, you know, what can you afford? What do you look like? What is your race? What car do you drive? What's your zip code? It really should be delivered equally. So I'm really excited about that session that's being led and I really hope everyone really tunes in, joins us, and supports it. It's also being cosponsored and coled by the AUPO, which is the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology, as well as the American Academy of Ophthalmology. So, again, we invite everyone to join us and be a part of the conversation and let's learn together, brainstorm together to solve some of these issues.


That sounds absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today. Dr Henderson and I'm really looking forward to hearing more about the optometry program and EnVision summit as a whole.

Bonnie An Henderson, MD, cofounder of EnVision Summit, sits down with Optometry Times to detail the upcoming event that takes a unique, family-friendly approach to centering diversity in the eye care profession.

EnVision Summit 2024: Incorporating diversity, family into eye care meetings with Dr Bonnie An Henderson

The 2024 EnVision Summit will feature a brand-new Optometry Program, co-chaired by Danica Marrelli, OD, FAAO, AAO Dipl, and Cecelia Koetting, OD, FAAO, DipABO.

EnVision Summit 2024: Inside the new Optometry Program and glaucoma panel with Dr Danica Marrelli

Danica Marrelli, OD, FAAO, AAO Dipl, sat down with 

 to chat about the upcoming EnVision Summit 2024, which is set to take place February 16-19 in Puerto Rico. This year, the meeting includes an Optometry Program, which is chaired by Marrelli and Cecelia Koetting, OD, FAAO, DipABO. Marrelli discusses what optometrists can expect from the family-oriented meeting, from exciting geographic atrophy and glaucoma co-managment panels to a built-in kids track to keep loved ones engaged during CE sessions.

Hi everyone, I'm here with Danica Marrelli, co-chair of the EnVision Summit Optometry Program, which is happening in Puerto Rico from February 16 through 19. Welcome, Dr Marrelli. I'm so glad you could join us.


Well, it's really a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.


Of course. So can you tell me a little bit more about what sets EnVision apart from other meetings?


Well, I think there are a few things. I mean, first of all, Puerto Rico, who doesn't want to be there in the winter, right? It's a beautiful location at a beautiful resort.

But really, if you get to the meat of it, I think there aren't too many meetings that have ophthalmology and optometry programs where all participants can cross match and go to whatever sessions they want to. I think that's really neat; I think every time we do a program where the two professions come together, I think that both professions come away learning more about the other. So I think it's a really unique opportunity.


Absolutely. I totally agree. I mean, it's eye care, right. 


We don't have to separate it all along lines.


Yeah, and the other thing I think that's really fun about EnVision is the the amount of thought that went into deciding that this is going to be a family friendly event, right, you can bring your kids. They let your kids come into the lectures if they want to. When I was talking to Bonnie Henderson about it, she said, "You know, think about the kids that may come in and just get inspired by seeing their mom up at the podium or seeing, you know, some other women in ophthalmology and optometry getting up and that might be a spark that that leads them into eye care or into some other profession where they can be a leader." I think it's really neat. I've never been to a meeting that we had that type of family involvement.


I think that is just the coolest thing to have that family element. It's awesome. What excites you in particular about the EnVision optometry program?

Cecelia Koetting [OD, FAAO, DipABO] and I are the co-chairs of this program and it's always a little, you know, "How are we going to make this new and exciting." I think the fact that most of the speakers are going to be optometrists, and then we're going to bring in panels where we have ophthalmologists that weigh in, and I think having that perspective of not being lectured to by an ophthalmologist, but watching and seeing this collaboration between optometry and ophthalmology is really neat. 

I've been communicating with one of the doctors on the retina panel, and he's just been great to say, "Oh, I love this question, this really is important. From an ophthalmologist, retinal specialist standpoint, I really want an opportunity to talk to the optometry audience about this." I hope it's really going to open people's eyes, so to speak, and encourage that co-management.


Yeah, absolutely. So you're also moderating a panel on co-managing geographic atrophy (GA) in glaucoma. Do you have any pearls that you'd like to share?


Yeah, so I'll take the first one, that geographic atrophy. I'll be very frank, my primary interest is glaucoma. I do see a lot of retina patients, but not a lot of geographic atrophy patients. But certainly anyone who's been to [American] Academy [of Optometry annual meetings] or other large meetings, I mean, the buzz right now is all about geographic atrophy. For so long, we have had nothing substantial to offer our patients with GA. Now we have these two new drugs, but we're still learning how to use them. We can't send every geographic atrophy patient to the retinal specialist, and they don't want every geographic atrophy patient. So what I really hope we're going to be able to send participants home with is some real practical advice about when should you watch them as an optometrist, and at what point should you say, "I think you may benefit from one of these new medications?" because they're not going to be for everybody. 

It's such a new and exciting area, and the other thing, we have Carolyn Majcher (OD). She's an optometrist who's now in Oklahoma, and she is really a whiz at what I would consider advanced [optical coherence tomography] OCT interpretation in retina. So as these drugs have become available, and we're looking more at GA as a treatable condition, it's really led to this uncovering of some new subtle things that we can look for in our OCTs, and I just can't think of a better person to talk about that than Carolyn. So I'm really looking forward to kind of the whole retina morning on Saturday morning, where we have hot topics in retina and then Carolyn's going to do a section on multimodal imaging, and then we're going to follow that up with how do we co manage these patients with our retinal specialist ophthalmology friends. 

So the second topic is co-managing glaucoma. That's where my heart is. I've really been interested in glaucoma for more than 30 years that I've been practicing. So as we move into, I guess what I would call 21st century glaucoma care, we have so many different interventional modalities. So, yes, we're still going to use eyedrops, but we have so much new evidence about SLT [selective laser trabeculoplasty] from the LiGHT trial, and then we're going to talk about the COAST study, which is a completely different way of looking at SLT. We're going to talk about medication delivery, so not just the Latanoprost XR, which we've had for a few years, but the new Travoprost implant that's available. 

So we're going to talk about a lot of new things. Of course, we're going to talk about MIGS [microinvasive glaucoma surgery], you can't really talk about glaucoma co-management without talking about MIGs. But I think we're really at a neat place in glaucoma care, where our tool box is really big and really full. I hope that optometrists who attend this program go home knowing or feeling more confident saying, "I can use more than just a prostaglandin, I have all these other things. When should I engage an ophthalmologist, a surgeon? When can I take care of them myself?" So I'm really, really looking forward to that. It's not very long, it's one hour, and I hope we can, you know, sort of pull everything together that I want to during that hour.


Yeah, that'll certainly be a challenging feat, but I believe in you.


So do you have anything else that you'd like to share?


I hope that participants are fully engaged in everything that the meeting has to offer. If you see a program, a lecture, a talk and the ophthalmology side, you just go to that side. Everybody can go to anything they want. We're going to be doing yoga in Puerto Rico. I can't wait.
I will say, one of my students, I teach at the University of Houston, College of Optometry and one of my students, she lives in America, but her family's from Puerto Rico. She said, "Oh, you're going to Puerto Rico," and she gave me all this long list of things to do. So I'm hoping to get away from the resort a little bit and just see a little bit of what Puerto Rico has to offer.


Of course, I mean, that's half the fun of going to a meeting is exploring the surroundings.


Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat about the EnVision summit with me, Dr. Marrelli, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Revitalize Your Leadership Journey: Dr. Marsha Link's 'Time to Thrive' IPO Unveiled at EnVision Summi

EnVision Summit 2024: How women in eye care can navigate a personal IPO journey

 to describe her IPO, encouraging women to assess their current leadership journey, strategically plan for advancement, and explore new opportunities for growth and impact in vision care at the EnVision Summit 2024. She shares some highlights here with Group Editorial Director Sheryl Stevenson.

- This transcript has been edited for clarity.

We are joined today by Dr. Marsha Link, who is among the presenters at this year's EnVision Summit. Welcome to you! So excited to see you again and to learn more about your talk today. Can you tell us about the title, 'Time to Thrive: Launch your Personal IPO.' Now that sounds really intriguing.

Well, thank you. Thanks, Sheryl. It's a pleasure to deliver 'Time to Thrive: Launch your Personal IPO' and this will be at the inaugural leadership session at the EnVision Summit. The intent of this leadership session is to provide a framework for high-achieving women to just increase their impact in vision care wherever they find themselves. And the presentation 'Time to Thrive' is really intended to be an encouraging inspirational challenge to women, to help them and offer some concrete ways that they can expand their leadership journey and their skills and thus their impact.

As you know, in the business world 'IPO' stands for initial public offering, but in 'Time to Thrive' those letters stand for something else.

So a description of this is that the I stands for Imagine. And the imagine is to take inventory of your current situation, the current state where you are in your leadership journey.

The P stands for Prepare, to be intentional about making a plan to move yourself to the next level or the next aspiration in your leadership journey.

And the O stands for Optimize, to optimize not only where you are now with the challenges and opportunities you have, but to consider and experiment with opportunities and leadership that may not even be on your radar at the moment.

So during this presentation, we will look in depth at I-P-O and come up with some very specific concrete suggestions on how leaders may further their skills and their aspirations and thus the impact that they have in vision care.

So I'm really excited about being able to deliver this. My wish is that everyone who attends will really understand that now is the time to thrive, and that they have all the power and ability to launch their own I-P-O so that they can reach their goals and add impact and valuable impact to vision care and to the patients that they serve. So I'm delighted to be a part of this EnVision Summit.

Well, that's fantastic. That sounds very empowering. Is there anything else to add that we haven't touched upon?

I think in this leadership summit...this leadership session that starts the summit....it's on Friday. I think Bonnie Henderson and Malvina Eydelman put together and myself put together an agenda that's going to be very powerful. And before I deliver this message, there will be 10 women who will be sharing very powerful stories about their own experiences as they've created their own leadership journey. So I'm excited. I think it all fits together nicely. And I think that people who are attending this will come away hopefully inspired and very willing to go to the next level of where they want to go with their leadership journey.

Marsha Link, PhD, uses three words—Imagine, Prepare, and Optimize—to encourage women to assess their current leadership journey, strategically plan for advancement, and explore new opportunities for growth and impact in vision care.

The EnVision Summit is being held at the El Conquistador Resort in Puerto Rico, and was created by physicians to support and empower leaders in an innovative format while being one of the most family friendly conferences in the field.

This year, the EnVision Summit will feature an optometry program for the first time, to go alongside the existing ophthalmology program. Sessions will be designed for optometrists and ophthalmologists alike, with some for both. Multiple sessions will feature presentations from both MDs and ODs.

Bonnie An Henderson, MD, founder and program director, stated this is the go-to meeting for those who want multi-specialty information.

“A lot of times you'll have a retina meeting or glaucoma meeting, but that's really what you're going to hear,” Henderson said. “If you want to go to a meeting where within the same room or 2 rooms, you really can get a wide range of information that you can really educate yourself, you're really going to get great multi-specialty education at this meeting in one place.”

Henderson also talked about the family friendly aspect of the EnVision meeting, stating that organizers “walk the walk, we don't just talk the talk” when creating an inclusive environment.

“Not only do a lot of the people bring their spouses or their children, but they're actually incorporated into the day,” Henderson explained. “This meeting is entirely different where the children are invited and the spouses are invited to participate, and [children] get to see their parents speak, which is so great.”

Eva Kim, MD, who oversees organizing the cataract and refractive portion of the meeting, also commented on the family-friendly nature of the meeting.

“I find that a lot of the attendees and speakers take the opportunity to bring their families. It has a mellow, relaxed nature about it,” said Kim. “I've been to some conferences that tried to combine both, and you almost feel like sometimes the presentations are just not as academically on the forefront or clinically on the forefront. I love the combination, the strength, of both [at EnVision]. Being social, bringing your family, relaxing, and getting updated.”

In regard to the cataract and refractive section, Kim stated it will focus on “what's new and what's coming.”

“The addition of an optometry program came from demand by optometrists as they “didn’t have anything like [EnVision],” said Henderson. “They don't actually have meetings that are run by women.”

When creating the programs, Henderson said they tried to create something that was concurrent, but distinct from one another since optometrists and ophthalmologists have different issues they handle. The meeting aims to target the appropriate topics for the appropriate audiences, according to Henderson.

Crossover does happen however, especially in topics like glaucoma and co-management with cataract surgeons who co-manage with optometrist partners.

Kim fits into that group, as she said there is 6 ophthalmologists and 5 optometrists in her team and will be on a panel regarding co-management. She stated she is eager to share how being a surgeon with referring optometrists works for her.

Kim stated she is “hoping that the optometry section for those ophthalmologists who maybe have a different attitude towards optometrists, kind of allows people to meet face to face and have discussions and can better those attitudes and perceptions about each other.”

The event, being held at the El Conquistador Resort in Puerto Rico, is offering programs for ophthalmologists and optometrists. 

EnVision Summit offers innovation in family-friendly format

MJH Life Sciences has announced its acquisition of the EnVision Summit, an annually-held continuing medical education conference for eye care providers.

 Held in Puerto Rico, the conference will be hosted within MJH’s Physicians’ Education Resource legacy portfolio and will be supported by 

“As we continue to expand our commitment to education in the eye care space, the acquisition of EnVision Summit allows us to build on the strong foundation we’ve established with our leading brands,” said Mike Hennessy Jr., president and CEO of MJH, in the release. “The summit and its hundreds of loyal attendees will benefit not only from our expertise in providing engaging educational experiences on cutting-edge topics, but also from new and expanded opportunities to help them address the rapidly evolving ophthalmic landscape.”

EnVision Summit Director and Cofounder Bonnie An Henderson, expressed excitement about what the acquisition means for the future of the conference. “I am thrilled about the possibilities that this acquisition brings for the EnVision Summit,” she said in the release. “With the resources and expertise of MJH Life Sciences, we will be able to elevate our educational offerings to new heights, ensuring that eye care professionals worldwide have access to the most current and comprehensive information in multiple channels to better serve their patients. I look forward to continuing as the program director to maintain the excellence of the content and faculty.”

 has previously covered the EnVision Summit. In our archives, we have 

an interview with Henderson prior to the 2024 Summit

, the co-chairs of the optometry track in 2024.

The 2025 summit is scheduled to run from February 14-17 at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico. To learn more about and register for the conference, visit its 

MJH Life Sciences acquires EnVision Summit, expands leadership in eye care education. News release. MJH Life Sciences. Accessed October 9, 2024.

The Eye Care Network adds a longstanding, CME-certified to its live event programming.

Bryan Wolynski, OD, FAAO

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