The AAO Foundation (AAOF) has announced that the Legacy 300 campaign to create the AAOF Craniofacial Growth Legacy Collection had met its $1.5 million fundraising goal. Donors include members of the AAO, orthodontic industry representatives, friends of the specialty, orthodontic study clubs, and orthodontic alumni groups.
The AAOF Craniofacial Legacy Growth Collection will preserve samples of irreplaceable longitudinal craniofacial growth records dating back more than 75 years and representing approximately 1,000 children and adolescents who did not have orthodontic treatment. Many of the older records are deteriorating due to the normal breakdown of radiographic images. The complete sets of growth records are now in collections that are the property of a number of American and Canadian universities.
The records to be preserved through digitizing include lateral and frontal cephalograms, hand-wrist films, dental radiographs, study casts, and written records on the subjects’ physical development. The digital files are being uploaded to a searchable online database.It currently houses more than 2,000 lateral cephalograms from nine collections, representing more than 200 cases.
The Legacy 300 campaign’s name refers to the maximum number of donors needed to reach the $1.5 million goal at the minimum recognition level of $5,000. Donors’ pledges were only to be used for the AAOF Craniofacial Growth Legacy Collection. All voting members of the AAOF Board of Directors are members of the Legacy 300.
