Building a Stronger Foundation for Treating Venous Disease
Although he is the new president for the organization, one can hardly call Robert McLafferty “new” to the Vascular Disease Foundation. With over eight years’ experience serving in several capacities, he’s got a great handle on how things currently work and a great vision for how things will work in the future.
VEIN Magazine spoke with Dr. McLafferty about his role as the head of the Board, his daily obligations and his hopes for reaching the masses in educating about venous disease.
VM: How has the VDF changed since you first started working with them?
RM: The Vascular Disease Foundation (VDF), the umbrella organization for both the Venous Disease Coalition (VDC) and the Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) Coalition, has been vested in several efforts to educate both physicians and the public on the dangers of venous and arterial disease. Both coalitions have grown enormously since I have been a part of the VDF. Their contributions have been phenomenal in the area of education to the public.
We started in 1998 as a multidiscipline group of physicians and laypeople that came together to promote awareness of vascular disease in order to prevent death and disability. I’ve been on the Board since 2003, and I kind of came up through the ranks of the VDF. It has grown immensely in the last 5 years.
We now have over a $1M budget, but with this growth has come some growing pains which we are managing very well.
Our website, www.VDF.org is visited frequently by patients, their families and friends looking for answers to
questions about deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism (PE), aneurysms, and carotid disease, just to name a few. And our new magazine, Keeping in Circulation, which started off as a newsletter, has grown into a full-fledged quarterly publication.
VM: Since you have a strong background with the VDF, what is different for you now that you’ve been named the President?
RM: My role as president of the board is to try to take the 50,000 foot view – I’m trying to make sure that all the
different programs and the operations as a whole are moving forward. I also will assist the staff and others in putting out any fires along the way. The VDF board and staff are excellent in helping out.
Most of my job consists of working on focused branding projects, facilitate fundraising, making donor support more streamlined, managing governance changes, facilitating execution of our Annual meeting - things that are all for the betterment of the VDF and the coalitions.
Each coalition is made up of member organizations with a steering committee. These member organizations have a specific interest in the particular disease/mission of each coalition. The annual meeting brings together all the constituents of the coalitions and the board of the VDF, as well as supporters and donors. The goal of the annual meeting is to facilitate networking, celebrate successes and discuss strategic goals for the coming year. Our next meeting is set for September 14-15. Physicians, industry leaders, and the public are encouraged to come. Registration can be done online at www.vdf.org.
I’m pretty involved globally, and while we are in the process of hiring a new CEO, I’m assisting on a very involved level to achieve this goal. We hope by the fall of this year we’ll have a new CEO in place to assist with our mission.
VM: What does your day look like when you are not focused on the VDF?
RL: I’m a 100% full time practicing general vascular surgeon, so I take care of all types of vascular disease. My scope of practice varies from repairing thoracic arterial aneurysms to sclerotherapy for spider veins. I enjoy, as a vascular surgeon, having the ability to treat patients with vascular disease from the medical side, endovascularly with catheters, or with open surgery. I feel very blessed to have a robust practice with a variety of problems presented to me. I typically have three operating days a week, I’m a medical director of a wound care clinic in one of our hospitals and see patients there with chronic wounds, I have a half-day vein clinic every week, and I see a large number of arterial patients in that setting. I also am very involved in administrative duties of our hospitals, and I am the medical director of case management for one of our hospitals, as well.
VM: What are the biggest challenges the VDF is facing and what do you most want our readers to walk away with?
RL: With all the things the coalitions are doing - the website, VTE ToolKit, webinars, PAD campaign, Spirit of Woman Awareness campaign – we are starting to be able to measure who actually hears those messages.
On the VDC side, the Spirit of Women hospital network and their Girls’ Night Out campaigns are educating women about the devastating effects of VTE. This five year program will have different stages along the way (see more below.) Currently, Michelle Lentz goes out to representatives from different Spirit of Women hospitals and educates in the maternity wards about DVT through these types of programs, with materials given out during the events to help education women about venous disease.
The PAD Coalition has a big awareness campaign on both radio and newsprint where they are using a grant from the federal government to do a “shock and awe” campaign showing the devastating effects of PAD. Although it seems somewhat radical, the campaign can show a photo of a man without a leg – replaced by a cigarette – to show how smoking causes peripheral arterial disease. It has been a success in terms of educating the public on PAD.
The VTE ToolKit was put together with the science committee and the education committee of the VDC- Susan Rathman and Bill Geertz worked on this monumental work. It is basically a slide set that is available with all the different topics of venous disease. These slide presentations can be downloaded and different topics can be used to educate health care providers about the different aspects of venous disease. I have been pretty impressed with the content and the ease and flow of each. It is a great asset for physicians to investigate different problems for venous disease. Heather Borland at Cleveland Clinic has helped put on our webinars on venous and arterial disease which target general practitioners and primary care physicians. This has been a very successful program and it continues to promote different areas of vascular disease. She and the VDF staff air one every three months - physicians help with picking a topic and people can ask live questions through the webinar process.
I really enjoy working with the VDF and I think it has greatpotential, but we need more support. You always wonder what effect you’re having with the work you’re doing. It is still a huge challenge making sure that the message is heard.