Northeast Ohio Celiac Disease Conference at Akron Children's Hospital a Success

Thank you to all who attended and participated in the Celiac Disease Conference at Akron Children's Hospital on Sunday, April 26, 2009. We hope you enjoyed the day and collected much valuable information and goodies. Wasn't the vendor fair delicious?

We had over 250 people in attendance. There were 23 vendors. The vendors raised money for the Hospital's Digestive Disease Department and the Family Resource Center. Some of the vendors provided the center with additional books on Celiac and the gluten free diet.

There are several follow up things to be addressed.

There was a request for information on a local pharmacist familiar with Celiac Disease. We have 2 in the Akron Area that I know of. One is Margo Mishik. She has worked with the Akron Celiac Support group and arranged for pharmacist credits to be connected to the past conference.
She works at one of the Giant Eagle Pharmacies. I will check further on which one. The other, who I am embarrassed to admit I can not remember her name, works at CVS on Cleveland Massilon Road in Copley. She has Celiac and understands our needs.

The children's videos and photos. We ran into 2 problems. We did not get back the photo release forms from parents. If you have the form please send it to Therese at 640 Fairhill Drive, Akron 44313. In several cases I have the forms, but they were signed by the children or teens themselves. If the person is under 18 I need the form signed by a parent or guardian. Please email me at tsemonin1@neo.rr.com and I will forward the release on to you. We have some great photos that we would like to send on to be in the national Celiac publications, and we would like to post the photos online for you to see.

The videos did not turn out as well as we had hoped. We will try to splice and fix them so they can go on YouTube. This may not be possible. We will hold a video session at one of our regular support meetings for the children to remake these videos or to plan and present new ones. We will post in advance which meeting this will be.