Dori M. Carlson, O.D., was first elected to the American Optometric Association Board of Trustees in June 2004, re-elected in 2006 and elected President-Elect at the 113th Annual AOA Congress and 40th Annual AOSA Conference: Optometry’s Meeting® in June 2010.
In addition to her responsibilities as President-Elect, Dr. Carlson serves as chair of the Investment and Personnel Committees and is a member of the Agenda and Executive Committees. Dr. Carlson serves as board liaison to the AOA Meetings Center, the American Academy of Optometry, the American Optometric Student Association and affiliate associations in California, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Prior to her election to the Board, Dr. Carlson was the first female president of the North Dakota Optometric Association. She served as chair of North Dakota’s Managed Care Committee, Hospital Privileges Committee and Mentoring Committee. She also served as chair of the AOA Information and Member Services Group, chair of the Membership Development Committee and was a member of the Communications Technology Project Team.
She continues to serve on the North Dakota Blue Cross Blue Shield Advisory Committee and is a long-standing member of the North Dakota Legislative Committee. She is a trained consultant for the Accreditation Council on Optometric Education.
Dr. Carlson is a graduate of the Pacific University College of Optometry. She then completed a residency at the American Lake and Seattle VA Hospitals. In 1994, she was honored as the North Dakota Young Optometrist of the Year and as the Optometrist of the Year in 2003. She is in private practice in Park River and Grafton, North Dakota.
Dori, everybody in North Dakota is so proud of you for your professional accomplishments and especially for becoming the first female President of the AOA. It has been a great honor for me to have you and your husband, Dr. Mark Helgeson, as personal friends. Thank you for being such an impressive President of the AOA. Your tours of the Schools of Optometry is extremely important for the students and for the Profession.
I just participated in a continuing education course at ICO. It is disheartening when top educators in the optometric field talk in terms of 2o/20 vision. The same language is present in our journals. There is no such thing as 2o/20 vision. It 20/20 visual acuity. It is sad when one branch of optometry is more interested in gaining acceptance by ophthalmology by using their language. Educators and people working with head injury patients become more confused about the difference between sight and vision. Sight is seeing clearly. Vision is perceiving, processing and performing. Vision is a sensory, cognitive and motor process. Furthermore, more people have learning related vision problems and vision problems following head injuries than actually require treatment for pathology. One out of 4 children is struggling or working below their potential because of convergence insufficiency. Optometrists are much more willing to refer to an opthamologist for pathology than to a behavioral/developmental optometrist to treat a binocular dysfunction.