Conference Content
The Amputee Coalition is pleased to announce the process for selecting 2023 National Conference presenters will begin March 1, 2023. This year’s selection process of presenters will be by invitation only.
Sessions Theme
The Amputee Coalition’s 2023 National Conference, themed “ELEVATE: Together Towards Tomorrow,” will highlight ways to build what’s next for the limb loss and limb difference community to ensure a world where our community thrives. The Amputee Coalition celebrates its diverse community and aims to fully engage all people living with limb loss and limb difference to build a collective voice on critical issues impacting the community and to elevate the organization’s mission: to support, educate, and advocate for people impacted by limb loss and limb difference.
The biggest challenges for the limb loss and limb difference community are centered on access, care, coverage, and employment. It is critical amputees receive the care and support they need when they need it. The Amputee Coalition advocates for policies and services to address these issues: How can we increase robust social and community support services to ensure amputees can navigate daily life with limb loss or limb difference? How can we grow our reach to teach more individuals about limb loss and limb difference to improve access to care and quality of life? How can we increase engagement with community leaders, particularly in underserved communities, to provide effective support and promote health equity? How can we better equip employers to practice disability inclusion and increase employment opportunities for people living with limb loss or limb difference?
We must ensure that all people living with limb loss and limb difference belong to and are represented in our community. We must ensure that programs and services are offered to help people living with limb loss and limb difference experience increased quality of life in ways that support the type of values that they assert. Enhancing mental, physical, emotional, behavioral, and financial health services in a time when people feel hopeless is more critical than ever. How can we focus our efforts to scale programs that better meet and reach more people who need our programs and services to ensure that amputees are not alone? How can we balance the disproportion of people we currently serve to grow representation of diverse races and ethnicities, as well as those living in urban and rural settings with limb loss and limb difference? In what ways can we implement common standards for high-quality living across the nation in every state as limb loss becomes less uncommon every day?
This year’s conference will offer educational tracks in four key areas: self-advocacy, health and wellness, community living, and career path engagement.
Sessions Tracks
Love Yourself (Self-Advocacy): These sessions help attendees discover the self-confidence to ask for the tools, resources, and support they need to be successful in the real world. Self-advocacy helps people with disabilities deal with stigmas and preconceived ideas people have about the disability community. It encourages individuals living with disabilities to discover their voice and speak up when encountering prejudices and inequalities.
Love Living (Health and Wellness): These sessions provide attendees with applied knowledge to increase capabilities to lead healthy lives for improving independence, productivity, integration, and inclusion. Addressing mental, emotional, physical, behavioral, and financial health and wellness, the content offerings provide tangible ways to increase quality of life.
Love the Community (Community Living): These sessions highlight the importance of people with disabilities having the same opportunities as everyone else to choose where to live, participate in society, and make decisions about their lives. Through a variety of programs, services, and initiatives provided by the Amputee Coalition, attendees will discover how to increase their engagement with the limb loss and limb difference community.
Love Career Growth (Career Path Engagement): These sessions help attendees discover their unique talents, skills, and abilities for identifying career paths to a successful future. Tackling diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, these sessions will address what a supportive workplace should look like, what skills to attain for advancement in these environments, and how to put the best professional effort forward to achieve career growth.
Sessions Types
Keynote Sessions are the highlights of the National Conference. So that all may attend, no other conference sessions are scheduled during the times when these plenary events take place. This year, the Amputee Coalition has two Keynote Sessions to kick off and extend the stimulating dialogues that are certain to spark compelling interest during the conference and long after!
Deeper Dives are highly interactive and timely learning experiences that target the development of new ways to scale efforts that reach more people living with limb loss and limb difference to ensure they are not alone in today’s world. Topics at these sessions reflect work that is central to the Amputee Coalition’s mission and its ongoing initiatives, including presentations from collaborating organizations and thought leaders within the industry. Attendees are sure to come away with innovative and inspiring content. Deeper Dive sessions are scheduled in pairs during dedicated time slots.
Fireside Chats are a more intimate take on presentations behind the traditional lectern. A moderator is seated onstage with a guest who is interviewed to allow the conversation to flow naturally. The stage is set informally, usually with two armchairs, to keep the atmosphere relaxed. The moderator asks questions to kick off the session in the right direction and engages audience interaction by allowing questions from the floor or through the use of technology.
Breakout Sessions are concurrent sessions that provide learning experiences in a variety of formats such as Data to Action, Community Popups, Roundtables, Campfires, Panel Discussions, and Expert Talks. Breakout Sessions cover a large spectrum of professional topics in support of the theme and tracks of the National Conference and are presentations in different locations that occur at the same time.
- Data to Action sessions are designed to release recent data in ways that encourage session participants to consider and discuss their relevance and practical application in everyday settings. These sessions are marked by brief presentation segments interspersed with robust small-group discussions focused on contextualization and practical application. Facilitators focus on presenting less information in favor of the small group interactions that allow participants to go deeper with the data, and present with vivid pictures, infographics, and stories
- Community Popups are lightning talks provided in five to 10 minutes to discuss an innovative topic. As presentations are brief, the speakers stick only to the storyline, pertinent points, and facts of the topic. Here, presentations are grouped under a particular theme, allowing delegates to select the most relevant presentations for them.
- Roundtable Sessions include a presentation by the organizer to introduce a topic, followed by discussion and feedback from participants as they are seated in a circle. Roundtable presenters bring targeted questions to pose to participants in order to learn from and with those attending. The presenter also summarizes and concludes on the subject at the end of the session. Roundtables are excellent venues for getting targeted feedback, engaging in in-depth discussions, and meeting colleagues with similar interests.
- Campfire Sessions are an informal take on the traditional presentation. While the session starts with a short presentation from a speaker, it then shifts to focus on gaining key participation from the audience. The presenter turns facilitator, allowing attendees to answer questions and provide comments. It allows attendees to drive their own learning, listen to different perspectives, and share experiences.
- Panel Discussions are focused on a particular theme or topic, with two or three panelists, each of whom will present their material, with a short time after each presentation, or at the end, for questions and answers. Panel discussions generate spontaneous interaction among panelists and between panelists and the audience in response to questions posed by the moderator.
- Expert Talks are traditional presentations made by one or more speakers to share research results or completed work, as well as innovative methodologies, tools, or resources. Expert Talks are formal presentations by an acknowledged expert in the field who provides new concepts on the latest research, best practices, or trending industry issues through a lecture followed by response to audience questions.