The Appalachian Center for Wilderness Medicine

The Appalachian Center for Wilderness Medicine (ACWM) is a regional collaborative non-profit dedicated to promoting quality wilderness medical education and practice in southern Appalachia (North and South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia). Its monthly email describes general wilderness medicine activities in this region and updates the readers on specific programs. We also maintain a regional calendar, updated at least monthly. The regional calendar lists all known wilderness medicine events being held in the Appalachian region from a variety of schools and providers

Registration is now open for the ACWM 2011 Southeastern Student Wilderness Medicine Conference, to be held March 5-6 in Johnson City, TN, and will be hosted by the medical students of the Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University. Didactic sessions will be held in Winged Deer Park and Stanton Gerber Hall. The Advanced Wilderness Life Support-New River Gorge 2011 course will be held at the New River Gorge in Fayetteville, WV on August 26-28, 2011. This 2011 AWLS course boasts a new, expanded curriculum.

In addition to the cotton t-shirts on the ACWM website, the organization now offers synthetic Mountain Hardwear logo shirts, available only by email order. The shirt being used is the Mountain Hardwear Wicked Lite t-shirt (more details at www.mountainhardwear.com/Wicked-Lite™-Short-Sleeve-Tee/OM3013,default,pd.html). Available colors are orb blue, cool gray, dark adobe, grasshopper, and north sea. These shirts carry the ACWM logo with tagline “Disrupting Natural Selection in Southern Appalachia Since 2007” with the logo on the back and the font logo on the front breast. To order, please first email ACWM at info@appwildmed.org to check on size and color availability. Cost is $25/shirt plus $2 shipping/shirt.

New in 2011, ACWM will be feature a regional wilderness medicine class or program every month in its newsletter. The January featured program is the SOLO Southeast/Nantahala Outdoor Center Survival School in Bryson City, North Carolina. This graduated program offers three levels of instruction, starting with the fundamentals (basic survival and bushcraft in Level I) through to “Extreme” and “Ultimate” Survival courses, completed on an adventure travel expedition to remote locations, such as the jungles of Belize or the Alaskan tundra. The stated philosophy is one of advancement through experience. For more information, check out the website: www.noc.com/noccom/outdoor-school/wilderness-survival-school