Welcome to The Great Lakes Association of Orthodontists!​

The Great Lakes Association of Orthodontists (GLAO) is a constituent of the American Association of Orthodontists. Components of the GLAO include: Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Ontario (Canada), and Pennsylvania (west of the Alleghenies). The GLAO advocates on behalf of its members and promotes the advancement of the Specialty of Orthodontics.

A Message from The GLAO President...

2018 GLAO President's Welcome - Dr. John Monticello

It is both an honor and a privilege to be the GLAO President for 2018-2019. Our thanks and gratitude to Dr. Jocie Weeden for her past year as President and the resolution of the difficult challenges she faced. Happily, she will be with the Board for another year as the Immediate Past President. Every year there is something, generally unexpected, that requires some timely and knowledgeable action. Fortunately, we have a wealth of resources and leaders to provide input. I have served on this Board for over 18 years and have found that the Great Lakes Association of Orthodontists is an association of very intelligent doctors with an abundant number of dedicated, motivated and resourceful leaders. In that light, I want to congratulate Dr. Michael Sherman who will be our new Trustee to the AAO next May.

Over the last several years our focus has been on making the GLAO more relevant for our members. To that end we created the E-Newsletter and the Facebook page for quicker interaction with members. I served on a Task-Force to review our annual meetings and how we can make them more satisfying for attendees to assure that the GLAO Annual Session is always a consideration for members.

Our profession is changing. The technology and treatment modalities change overnight and the means by which we acquire our CE is no longer solely based on what we can get at the AAO, GLAO and Component meeting. We are all aware of the availability of manufacturer sponsored courses, online courses, Pearls meetings, ortho chat rooms etc. However, what they all may be missing is the independent, verifiable scientific information and the interpersonal, collegial, social element. They also do not provide any substantial staff clinical training and are frequently not convenient for staff to attend. Meetings are becoming more expensive to convene as venue costs increase and manufacturer sponsorships decline. Some of our strategies for relevancy include doing what we can to make our Annual Session affordable, beneficial and enjoyable with reliable information. Going forward, we will need to partner with other Constituencies to get more manufacturer support, yet we will try to keep our meetings within our region as much as possible.

We will be within our Constituency in two of the next three years, specifically Cleveland in 2020 and Indianapolis in 2021. Next year we will again partner with MASO (Middle Atlantic Society of Orthodontists) and will be heading to a staff-friendly resort location, the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Our initial plans were made three years ago for St. Thomas in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, they were cancelled when the Marriott hotel there was damaged by last year’s Hurricane Maria.  As a consolation, Marriott has offered the Ft. Lauderdale venue at nearly half price rooms. We explored and found the air fare to Florida is relatively low from all the major cities in our area.  Topics that are current and will draw members include esthetics, function and stability; pediatric sleep apnea, 3-D printing in the office, cuspid substitution, office internet security and financial management. We are also arranging some hands-on clinical training for assistants.

In order to become more relevant for all GLAO Members we want to have clinically relevant topics for doctors and staff so the whole team will return with knowledge they can use in the office to improve efficiencies and outcomes.  

Please join me in in supporting our specialty and our common goals of uncompromised patient care.