The Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Piet Haers, has announced his plans to end his term as Editor-in-Chief at the 20th International Conference on Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (ICOMS) in Santiago, Chile, which runs from November 1-4, 2011.

In the first-ever annual competition by the International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (IAOMS), the IAOMS Foundation, under the direction of the Association's Academic Committees, has awarded three one-year Fellowships to individuals from Spain, India, and Singapore: Sergio Ramirez Varela, Rinku George, and Andrew Ow, respectively.

Councilors for the International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons have wholeheartedly endorsed an initiative by the Board of Directors and Executive Committee to provide IAOMS membership at no cost to all oral and maxillofacial surgery trainees worldwide.

To qualify, each Trainee will need to complete a membership application for Trainees, which asks for the name of the Trainee's program and location, training program director's name and email address, and program completion date. The information is then verified by the IAOMS with a final approval by the IAOMS Executive Director.

If a Trainee wishes to receive the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (IJOMS), he/she can opt to pay either $20 for online access or $40 for online access and printed copies sent by post.

Satheesh Prabhu, an oral and maxillofacial surgery trainee, was recently declared the winner of the International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons contest, "Advancing the Specialty", sponsored by Synthes. Satheesh met the challenge of the contest--"Do you have an innovative idea as to how to advance the image of our specialty?" with his innovative program, "ProjecTrain: Global Learning for Global Care of Patients." As the contest winner, Satheesh received a $2,000 check, compliments of Synthes.

The ProjecTrain weblectures are now available on the members-only section of the IAOMS website--IAOMS Direct--to all IAOMS members and free-of-charge to all OMS Trainees who register with the IAOMS.

Past issues of the IAOMS Weekly eNewsBrief are now available on IAOMS Direct sorted by article topics. The weekly e-publication provides comprehensive news briefings of the week’s top industry stories to IAOMS members. As the oral and maxillofacial specialty continues to evolve, IAOMS Weekly eNewsBrief will keep members abreast of the industry news that directly impacts the daily operation of their practices. Each issue aggregates the news for IAOMS members and delivers numerous quality articles to their inbox weekly in a format that specifically represents the IAOMS.

More than 100 attendees participated in the fourth Continuing Education program in Encarnacion, Paraguay on April 22-25, 2010. Featured speakers were Dra. Edela Puricelli (Brazil) who spoke on the topic of pre-prosthetic surgery; and Rafael Martin Granizo (Spain) who spoke on the topic of implants.

A course on Trauma was conducted at Sg. Buloh Hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on April 22-24, 2010. The program was the 2nd of four educational courses planned for Malaysia. More than 90 participants attended from all over Malaysia with four attendees from the Philippines.

IAOMS Councilor for Peru, Samuel Allen,  has begun the Borderless Craniofacial Project with the assistance of Health Volunteers Overseas. Borderless Craniofacial will work to increase the standard of care of low-income patients in Peru and provide them with maxillofacial as well as craniofacial treatment at reduced fees by working closely with the Peruvian health system. The goal of the collaboration between Borderless Craniofacial, and Health Volunteers Overseas is both to provide excellent patient care to the less fortunate in Peru as well as to provide a residency training program for motivated oral and maxillofacial surgeons.

The 6th course in the IAOMS Continuing Education Program in East Africa was held between March 1-5, 2010 on the topic of Head and Neck Tumors. Featured speakers were Jan de Visscher and Thjis Merks, both of the Netherlands.

With the recent tragic earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, IAOMS President Larry W. Nissen urges members to consider the formation of a Maxillofacial Disaster Relief Team to help out those affected by such tragedies.

IAOMS makes it possible for your OMS association to publicize current reports, calendar of events, and photos on our new website! If your OMS association has submitted information for the IAOMS Newsletter in the past year, the first report of this kind has already been created and is posted with your association’s listing under: “About Us: Regional and National OMS Associations.” Simply click on your regional association or national association listing and follow the “Click here to read report” link at the end of the listing.

If you have something you would like included in your association’s report, please send them to your IAOMS Councilor (or association president, if no IAOMS Councilor has been appointed). He or she can then forward them to IAOMS headquarters c/o kspaedy@iaoms.org where the report/calendar item/photo will be placed into the report format and posted on the website.

Click "Read More" to see a sample report.

All members are requested to please log on to the IAOMS website using your email address and password and update your profile to indicate whether you prefer to receive the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery via online delivery or in printed form via post (online access to archived journals will remain available to all members.)

If you have any photos from the following ICOMS, please send them to Kerry Spaedy, IAOMS Director of Marketing & Development via email: kspaedy@iaoms.org or postal mail: 17w220 22nd Street, Suite 420, Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181, USA.
• VIII ICOS, Berlin, 1983
• IX ICOMS, Vancouver, 1986
• X ICOMS, Jerusalem, 1989
• XI ICOMS, Buenos Aires, 1992
• XII ICOMS. Budapest, 1995
• XV ICOMS, Durban; South Africa, 2001
• XVI ICOMS, Athens, Greece, 2003

Members who do not renew until after January 1^st of any year will not receive back issues of the Journal and will need to purchase any missing issues from Elsevier directly.