Lesley Ann Fein, M.D. MPH, accepted the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) medal for Confronting Lyme Disease at the gala in New York City. Dr. Fein wrote the foreword to the book and practices in Caldwell, New Jersey. She also was recently featured on Discovery Health Mystery Diagnosis.
LOCAL AUTHOR EARNS NATIONAL RECOGNITION FOR LYME DISEASE BOOK
The 11th annual Independent Publisher Book Awards recently announced that Trish Yerges of Summerville and her co-author, Rita Stanley, Ph.D., of Portland, are bronze medal winners for their book, "Confronting Lyme Disease: What Patient Stories Teach Us," published by The Mitre's Touch Gallery in La Grande.
The Independent Publisher Book (IPPY) Awards is an annual recognition event open to all members of the independent publishing industry. Winners are chosen from among thousands of exemplary independent, university and self-published titles produced each year. They are recognized for their courage, innovation and creativity in bringing about change in the world of publishing.
Last week, the 2007 IPPY Awards announced their gold, silver and bronze medalists after judges made their semi-finalists selection from 2,690 entries in 65 national categories. The entrants came from 50 U.S. states, 8 Canadian provinces and 17 countries overseas.
"Confronting Lyme Disease" won its award within the health, medicine and nutrition category. The gold award in that category went to "The Official Autism 101 Manual" by Karen L. Simmons (Autism Today), and the silver award went to "Diabetes: Sugar-Coated Crisis" by David Spero, R.N. (New Society Publishers).
Stanley invited Yerges to write the award-winning book after Yerges' daughter, Lauren, who had contracted Lyme disease in Wisconsin, was successfully treated in Union County. Stanley was a Lyme disease support group leader at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland when Yerges sought her guidance in Lauren's case. Stanley has done original research in the fields of physiology and biochemistry and has published in leading scientific journals such as The Journal of Biological Chemistry; Journal of Neurochemistry and Biology of Reproduction.
"Confronting Lyme Disease" was released for sale in March 2006 through Amazon, Booksurge and The Mitre's Touch Gallery. It compassionately relates the experiences of 14 Lyme disease patients from Canada and the United States and how they overcame the unexpected obstacles to diagnosis, testing and treatment.
Their book was endorsed by Lyme disease specialist Lesley Ann Fein, M.D., MPH, medical director of the Pennsylvania Lyme Disease Society; Jim Wilson, president of the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation, Westbank, British Columbia; and Dolly Curtis, cable TV producer and host of "Dolly Curtis Interviews," Easton, Conn.
The authors entered the 2007 IPPY Awards last September, not knowing exactly how it would compare with other titles in an international event of this caliber.
"We're honored and deeply satisfied to have become a medalist in the 2007 IPPY Awards. It was a two-year project motivated by our desire to help Lyme disease patients and at the same time educate the medical community," said Yerges. - La Grande Observer