The Ninth Annual Nutrition and the Eye Symposium a Great Success

The “Nutrition and the Eye Symposium IX”, held April 16^th and 17^th on the UMSL campus was, once again, very successful.  This program has increasingly gained national prominence as THE educational program to attend to learn from some of the world’s leading experts on nutrition and the vision system.  This year’s program was no less outstanding in it’s content and the qualifications of those who were on the faculty.  Optometrists from all around the Midwest were present as well as a few prominent optometrists nationally as Millicent Knight OD, Head of Professional Affairs at Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, and former College of Optometry faculty member and prominent Charlotte, NC practitioner, Paula Newsome OD, both attended this symposium to learn cutting edge information about nutrition and the eye. 

The 2016 symposium was, once again, under the exceptional direction of Stuart Richer OD, PhD, FAAO, who is currently director of ocular preventive medicine at James Lovell Federal Health Care Facility in Chicago.  Internationally renown for his work in clinical antioxidant research, he has special interests in aging, prescribing nutrients in the intervention of age-related macular degeneration, low-tension glaucoma, diabetic macular edema, prevention of cataracts, and dry eye.  His program included an excellent faculty including Alan Barbey PhD, Director of the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, and Elizabeth (“Liz”) Johnson PhD, Associate Professor at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.  The keynote speaker was Denise Valenti OD, FAAO, a MCPHS University Adjunct Faculty member for Low Vision Care, who lectured on the topic of “Alzheimer’s, Cannibis and Cannabinoids”.  Dr. Richer was very pleased with the program as he relates: “The UMSL IX Ocular Nutrition Weekend provided the opportunity to publicly  recognize our key note speaker,  Dr. Denise A Valenti, who thus far has more than 30 years of clinical and research experience. She has “feet on the ground clinical experience“ in gerontology, neurodegenerative disease and rehabilitation. It has been said that you can teach an expert, but you can’t teach them much. Dr Valenti on the other hand, is that rare individual ‘expert’ who can synthesize vast amounts of published information, while maintaining an open mind. Her clinical  perspective on marijuana, its legalization and ramifications were spectacular. She is the type of optometrist we should all inspire to be, and I was pleased to recognize her career accomplishments.” We invite all of you to join us next year for the tenth annual symposium on nutrition and the eye.