Evolution of the EnVision Summit

Bonnie Henderson, MD, founder and program director of the EnVision Summit, talked with Ophthalmology Times about the evolution of the conference and how it brings optometrists and ophthalmologists together to learn, discuss shared problems, and facilitate co-management in a family-friendly environment.

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Bonnie Henderson, MD:

Hi. My name is Bonnie Henderson, and I am the founder and program director of Envision Summit. And it's such an honor to be working here once again with MJH Life Sciences and PER. It's been a terrific partnership, starting last year, and now this year, we're even more cohesive, and we're collaborating together very well. We're here at the Caribe Hilton this year, February 2025, and it's been such a wonderful meeting, filled with fantastic speakers, amazing intellectual and fantastic talks, and the venue is beautiful. And I think for me, the crown jewel of this meeting is really how we incorporate the family and the youth program into the entire program. And I love to see the delightful faces of all the family members that come and they're so excited to be here and see all their friends that they've been growing up with with this meeting.

So one of the stories I love to share is the children of one of the doctors here, who's a speaker, who's come back a few years in a row. Their children have now become friends with the children of other doctors, and so they really look forward to coming back every year so they can actually see their other friends, their children, and they actually have a delightful reunion as well.

This is our sixth year here at Envision Summit, and it's amazing to see from the beginning to now and how much it's grown every year. So in the beginning, as you can imagine, it was small. It was a very casual meeting altogether, and we didn't know whether people were going to come at all. And the whole idea of this meeting was to bring together people from different backgrounds, different life experiences, and also keep it a very casual, family-friendly location. That people can bring their spouse, they can bring their kids, they can bring their parents. And come together share ideas, talk about ophthalmology and talk about the specific details that they deal with on a day-to-day basis in their practice, but also in an environment where they feel like they don't have to isolate it from their personal life. So that from beginning to now has actually continued. So that feeling of a cohesive, casual, family-friendly environment has continued, but it's been growing every year, and it's been an amazing partnership with our industry partners. They've been so supportive. And the speakers that come and the physicians that come to actually listen to the talks—we've had such great feedback and we're so excited to continue to grow every year.

So when we first started Envision Summit, it was really an ophthalmology-focused program. And it was for MDs, created by MDs. And what we noticed is a lot of people practice with optometry partners too. So whether they're already in your practice or whether they're in the community. And we found that there was a need to really bring those parties together and have those conversations because we oftentimes share in the care of the same patient, we share the same diseases, and all the rest. So I thought it was really important to build within Envision Summit a track for optometrists to also get their continuing education. And so it's really been a really nice addition to bring in optometrists as well as ophthalmologists to talk about their co-management issues and share ideas between the two. I think it's been a really nice way to bring in the different fields together, and so they can also discuss shared problems that they have, as well as different problems that they may have. And I think that it's been a really nice added benefit to have the two, you know, in the same convention center, really. And so it's been a delightful partnership with optometry and ophthalmology together.