OA Action Alliance Program Updates
Members of the OA Action Alliance Team
 Kirsten Ambrose, MS, CCRC is the Program Manager here at the Alliance. She has helped us to make a smooth transition of program operations of the OAAA to UNC and manages our day-to-day operations. This includes updating our website, organizing Lunch & Learn webinars, working on member recruitment and engagement, managing and supporting our three work groups and supporting the Steering Committee. She comes to us with many years of experience in research, writing and strategic planning.
 My-Linh Luong, MSPH is a fourth year doctoral student in the Department on Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She joins our team with four years of research experience with Dr. Leigh Callahan on social determinants and osteoarthritis and was previously a fellow at the UNC Institute on Aging. She works as an Assistant Program Manager and Social Media Specialist for the Alliance. If you have a conference, webinar, resource or event you would like to promote (or if you want to just say hello!), please send her an email at mylinh.oaaa@gmail.com.
 Yvonne Golightly, PT, MS, PhD is a Research Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research focuses on the long-term effects of musculoskeletal injury and disorders of the lower extremity. She is interested in identifying modifiable risk factors for injury and OA and developing non-pharmacologic/non-surgical treatments and prevention strategies. She serves as our Grants Program Officer and is currently helping to lead the charge on the Physical Activity Implementation Guide Mini Grant Program.
 Bre Heaberlin is a junior at UNC and is also the starting goalie for the UNC Women’s Soccer team. She assists the Alliance as a member of our social media team. Go Heels!
Strategic Planning Meeting
We are busy preparing for our Strategic Planning Meeting, which will be held here at the University of North Carolina’s Thurston Arthritis Research Center this week on Wednesday, April 8th. We are looking forward to meeting with members of our Steering Committee to focus on strategic and action planning that moves the OA Action Alliance toward organizational excellence and achievement of its goals. We hope this meeting will provide clarity and direction for future efforts to advance awareness, education, resources for OA, including a plan for sustainability of the Alliance. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up-to-date with happenings at the meeting!
Please fill out this short survey with your ideas on how the OA Action Alliance can work toward achieving our 4 overarching goals for the Steering Committee’s consideration.
Visit our online Resource Library
Our resource library contains information, guides, and pamphlets produced by our work groups. For example, you can find one-pagers on preventing ACL Injuries and Improving Performance, a Physical Activity Implementation Guide for public sectors to improve access to physical activity for adults with arthritis, and pamphlets to assist individuals affected by excess weight and who are experiencing joint pain or have been diagnosed with arthritis to take action steps to improve their joint pain.
Stay Connected with Us
We have updated our website and launched our presence on social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook. We see social media as a way to share critical information to our members and provide the public with a better understanding of the work we do. Please like, share and retweet our posts and spread the word about our work and use the hashtag #osteoarthritis in your posts. In the upcoming quarter we hope to launch a regular e-newsletter that complements our social media presence and that highlights news, research, opportunities, events, webinars, and resources from our member organizations.
We love highlighting our work groups and member organizations! If you would like us to feature you or your organization, please send your submission to mylinh.oaaa@gmail.com
Advocating for Arthritis on Capitol Hill
Assistant Program Manager and Social Media Specialist, My-Linh Luong, recently attended the Arthritis Foundation Advocacy Summit on Monday, March 24th and joined the North Carolina delegation to #AdvocateforArthritis on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, March 25, 2015. She met with the offices of North Carolina Senators Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, as well as Congressmen David E. Price, George Butterfield, Patrick McHenry, and Mark Walker. Other members of the delegation included: Kelly Mieszkalski, MA, Executive Director of the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA); Virginia Kraus, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Professor of Pathology at Duke; and Angie Allen, an advocate from Swannanoa, NC who has arthritis. |
Director’s Corner 
