The latest WSA news and activities

01 Apr 2021

Dear WSA friends and colleagues,

We are excited to update you on the latest WSA news and activities this month:

WSA Women in Stroke Initiative

The WSA team took the International Women’s Day as an occasion to celebrate the achievements and careers of women in stroke and highlight female leadership.

WSO board members were asked to participate in this initiative and nominate outstanding women working in stroke medicine, stroke research and stroke advocacy. We are very happy to report that we received a total of 70 nominations, representing women from all continents.

Throughout March, we released podcasts and interviews with selected nominees on the WSO website. We are very proud to share some inspirational quotes from the nominees of the Women in Stroke Initiative:

Anita Arsovska - inspirational

My vision is life without stroke. Through prevention, treatment and long-term care we can decrease the burden of stroke in each country.

Sarah Belson - fascinating

Along with the team from the WSO SSO Committee, I have been working on the Global mapping report of all SSOs globally, the report includes 92 SSOs from 58 countries who shared their information and perspectives with us.

Julie Bernhardt - brilliant

Be brave and spend some really good time finding the people that will support you; it is a very exciting area and it does not come without its challenges.

Cheryl Bushnell - powerful

Women have a very different leadership style, they are organized, goal oriented, selfless, prefer to lead by example and tend to be more team oriented and try to get everybody to work together.

Dominique Cadilhac - courageous

There are many opportunities for women to work in any area of stroke, we bring important contribution through understanding of different approaches.

Valeria Caso - passionate

I am planning to work exclusively on women's health in the near future. This is because, after more than 20 years of working with female stroke patients, I have realized that women need to be better educated regarding their responsibilities associated with maintaining their health.

Avril Drummond - remarkable

Be enthusiastic, be brave and embrace any opportunities. Sometimes you also have to create opportunities: volunteer, become part of a team and upscale yourself!

Amy Edmunds - heroic

One of the challenges being the first patient advocacy organization exclusively devoted to addressing the needs of young stroke survivors and their caregivers that there was virtually impossible to find any grant funds of any donor who shared our vision at the time.

Patrice Lindsay - amazing

I see some of the challenges in our systems and know that the work we do actually makes them better, that’s rewarding.

Sheila Martins - fantastic

Believe in you, you can do it!

Rita Melifonwu - changemaker

We established a Life-after stroke center in Nigeria- the only one in sub-saharan Africa. And a big inspiration to me is the work with stroke survivors: to see them regain their confidence, get up again after stroke and take on new career opportunities after their stroke is empowering.

Sandy Middleton - enthusiastic

Be Persistant. It’s a hard road being a researcher and it’s slow. Sometimes people will say no, but then you are talking to the wrong people. Go and find the people who are going to say yes and look for ways to make it happen!

Else Sandset - impressive

Stroke is such a devastating disease, you go from being completely healthy one minute to the next minute you are disabled, not able to continue your daily activities.

Marion Walker - wonderful

I’m inspired by collaborations and by working together as a team. And I think that is why stroke care and stroke research have been so attractive to me. The thinking from the diversity of a team makes the outcome even better!

Joanna Wardlaw - pioneering

Leave no stone unturned. No idea is too small to be worth thinking about- or too extreme.

Borjana Zvan - exemplary

A great achievement was to ensure equal treatment of all patients in Slovenia and access to state-of-the-art treatment by introducing the TeleStroke network.

WSA paper of the month

This month, WSA Editor-in-Chief Gustavo Saposnik selected a paper by Martin Ebinger et al. published in JAMA: Association Between Dispatch of Mobile Stroke Units and Functional Outcomes Among Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke in Berlin.

Find the Editorial and author interviews with Professor Martin Ebinger and Professor Heinrich J. Audebert on the WSO website.

Original article: Ebinger M, Siegerink B, Kunz A, et al. Association Between Dispatch of Mobile Stroke Units and Functional Outcomes Among Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke in Berlin. JAMA. 2021;325(5):454–466. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.26345

This month’s WSA webinar:

In our next webinar we will discuss the topic “Minor Stroke and TIA” and are excited to announce that stroke specialists Professor Shelagh Coutts (University of Calgary, Canada) and Professor Peter Rothwell (University of Oxford, UK) will join our panel. Following the talks on i) initial diagnosis and investigation and ii) urgent and subacute treatment of minor stroke/TIA, there will be an interactive Q&A session moderated by members of the WSO Research Committee.

Date and time: Wednesday, April 28^th at 9 AM MDT/11 AM EDT/ 5 PM CET

Registration: http://bit.ly/WSOwebinar5

Yours,

the WSA team: Gustavo Saposnik (Canada), Editor –in– Chief; Anita Arsovska (North Macedonia), Associate Commissioning Editor; Alina Schwarz (Austria), Executive Manager; Rodrigo Guerrero (Chile), Social Media Leader and Florencia Casagrande (Argentina), Communications Specialist.

We’re happy to help- contact us with your questions or proposals for elearning content/webinars at education@world-stroke.org

Back to the top