FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 18, 2015

CONTACT: James F. Jorkasky Executive Director 240-221-2905 jamesj@eyeresearch.org

AEVR ANNOUNCES CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING—INFLAMMATORY EYE DISEASE: FOCUS ON UVEITIS

(Washington, D.C.) Today, the Alliance for Eye and Vision (AEVR) announced that it will hold a Congressional Briefing entitled Inflammatory Eye Disease: Focus on Uveitis on June 3, 2015, from 12:00 pm to 1:15 pm in room B-369 of the Rayburn House Office Building. To RSVP for the briefing, please contact Dina Beaumont at 202-530-4672 or dinabeau@aol.com.

Janine Austin Clayton, M.D., National Institutes of Health (NIH) Associate Director for Research on Women’s Health and Director of the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, will provide a welcome and a context as to why uveitis is of such concern. A board-certified ophthalmologist, Dr. Clayton was previously the Deputy Clinical Director of the National Eye Institute (NEI) where her research included autoimmune ocular diseases.

Featured speaker Gary Holland, M.D. (Jules Stein Eye Institute/David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA) will describe all aspects of uveitis and its impact on at-risk populations, review the difficulties and costs associated with treatments, and identify new directions for research dealing with inflammatory eye diseases.

The event is co-sponsored by Research to Prevent Blindness, the American Uveitis Society, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Women in Ophthalmology, Women’s Eye Health, the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, the Sjögren's Syndrome Foundation, and the Society for Women’s Health Research.

Alliance for Eye and Vision Research (AEVR), a 501(c)3 non-profit foundation, is proud to announce these educational programs associated with its Decade of Vision 2010-2020 Initiative, a sustained educational effort acknowledged by Congress that recognizes the benefits of federally funded vision research. Visit its Web site at www.eyeresearch.org