With governmental endorsement in 62 countries, the BJD has fostered innumerable successes in its eight years, from high profile to intensely personal. “What the BJD initially started out to do, we have accomplished in aces and spades,” says Amye L. Leong, MBA, president and CEO of Healthy Motivation in Philadelphia, spokesperson and director of strategic relations for the BJD, and an ISC member. “We have brought together organizations and countries and created awareness among institutions like ministries of health and departments of health and human services of the need for better surveillance and epidemiology work on identifying the prevalence and impact of these types of disorders.”
BJD Timeline
1998 –Inaugural Consensus Meeting held in Lund, Sweden
1999 – BJD 2000–2010 receives official United Nations endorsement
2000 – BJD launched at the headquarters of the WHO
2000 – First Bone and Joint Decade World Network Conference, in Oman
2003 – Office of the U.S. Surgeon General publishes its first-ever Report on Bone Health and Osteoporosis
2004 – U.N. Stakeholders Forum on Global Road Safety is held at the U.N. in New York
2007 – 1st U.N. Global Road Safety Week is held April 23–29 2007
2007 – U.K. BJD Chair Appointed to National Advocate for the NHS
2007 – Middle East and North Africa announce a consensus on osteoporosis, and develop regional guidelines for osteoporosis care
2007 – World Network Conference and Patient Advocacy Seminar, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
2007 – BJD ISC Members Awarded for Outstanding Achievement by ACR
Peter Brooks, MD, professor of rheumatology and head of the faculty of health sciences at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and a member of the BJD ISC, points to a particularly notable accomplishment down under. Through the focus provided by the BJD, the Arthritis Foundation of Australia and Osteoporosis Australia persuaded their federal government to declare arthritis and musculoskeletal disease one of its seven health priority areas, alongside cancer, cardiovascular health, and others. Funding is apportioned from the declared health priorities.
The BJD set its sights on decreasing road traffic accidents, which, each year, claim 1.2 million lives and injure 20 to 50 million people. The majority of deaths and injuries occur in young males between age 15 and 44; people in low- and middle-income countries are especially affected.3 “We spend, as a conservative estimate, over $550 billion every year on road traffic injuries,” says Dr. Al-Kharusi. “And yet, traffic injuries were not part of the G-8 Summit Millennium Goals.”
