Strategies for Enhancing Eyesight A Collaborative Educational Program to Improve Vision in Patients With Diabetes

Dr. David M. Brown graduated from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, and completed an ophthalmology residency and medical retina and vitreoretinal surgery fellowship at The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. In 1993, he was awarded the Ronald G. Michels Fellowship Award as the most outstanding retina fellow in the United States. Dr. Brown’s research and clinical interests are focused on diseases of the macula: macular surgery, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and diabetic retinopathy. An elected member of The Macula Society and of The Retina Society, he directs one of the largest clinical trial centers for retinal disease in the United States. He has published and written more than 150 national meeting presentations, abstracts, and scientific papers, including many of the primary papers establishing the use of anti-VEGF agents for AMD, central retinal vein occlusion, and diabetic retinopathy. Dr. Brown serves as a peer reviewer for all five major ophthalmology/retina journals, and also for The New England Journal of Medicine. He is a former president of the Houston Ophthalmological Society and has served on the board of directors for the Greater Houston Area American Diabetes Association as well as for the Gulf Coast Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He is an elected member of both major retina honor societies—The Macula Society and The Retina Society. From 2007 to 2011, Dr. Brown was selected by his peers, nationwide, as one of “America’s Best Doctors” and is a Texas Monthly “Super Doc.”

Dr. Elman has practiced ophthalmology for over 30 years, specializing in diseases of the retina and vitreous. Author of more than 150 publications on retinal diseases and surgery, Dr. Elman is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is currently the Director of Retina Surgery at Franklin Square Hospital. Dr. Elman directed the Clinical Research Unit at the University of Maryland and was bestowed the Young Scholar Award for the entire University of Maryland. Dr. Elman is one of only 280 ophthalmologists worldwide elected to the prestigious American Ophthalmological Society. He serves as the national Study Chairman of the Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network (DRCRnet) Protocol I, a national collaborative clinical trial that recently revolutionized the treatment of diabetic macular edema. Dr. Elman, a member of the DRCRnet's Executive Committee, served as its chairman last year.

 

Certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology and a fellow of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, Dr. Elman is a graduate of Wayne State School of Medicine. He completed his internship in internal medicine at Sinai Hospital of Detroit and his residency in ophthalmology at the University of Illinois Eye Center in Chicago. He received fellowship training in Retinal Vascular Diseases at the Wilmer Eye Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and fellowship training in Diseases and Surgery of the Retina and Vitreous at Barnes Hospital/Retina Consultants, Ltd. of Washington University. Dr. Elman and his wife are actively involved in many community and philanthropic organizations. Together, they are the devoted parents of four children and doting grandparents to six grandchildren.

Anne Peters, MD, is a professor at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) and the director of the USC Clinical Diabetes Programs. She runs diabetes centers in Beverly Hills, California, and in underserved East Los Angeles and works with the LA County Department of Health Services on a county-wide diabetes program. Dr Peters earned her undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and her medical degree from the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. She performed her internal medicine residency at Stanford University, Stanford, California, and Harbor-University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center (final year) and a fellowship in endocrinology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was in charge of the clinical diabetes programs at Cedars and then at UCLA before moving to USC. Dr Peters has been a principal investigator on multiple clinical trials focusing on diabetes and diabetes prevention. She established the Community Diabetes Initiatives Research Center in collaboration with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles with funding from the Keck Foundation, JDRF, American Diabetes Association (ADA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Rose Hills Foundation, California Nutrition Network, TrialNet, and Helmsley Trust. Dr Peters is a principal investigator on 3 NIH grants: the NIH Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) study, the UCLA/USC NIH P50 program project, “Family and Neighborhood Interventions to Reduce Heart Disease Risk in East L.A.”, and the NIH Vitamin D and Type 2 Diabetes (D2d) Study. She has been an invited speaker at hundreds of local, national, and international medical conferences. Dr Peters has authored 3 books on diabetes and more than 100 articles appearing in peer-reviewed medical journals, including JAMA,The New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Diabetes Care. She serves on the American Board of Internal Medicine Endocrine Board, multiple ADA committees, and the EASD (European Association for the Study of Diabetes)/ADA Diabetes Technology Committee. Dr Peters received the ADA Outstanding Physician Clinician Award in 2008 and the 2010 Bernardo Houssay Award from the National Minority Quality Forum for her work with the underserved. She is an author of the ADA/EASD Position Statement on the Management of Hyperglycemia in Type 2 Diabetes and the upcoming ADA Position Statement on the Treatment of Type 1 Diabetes Across the Lifespan.