MFA Statement on COVID-19

As the new coronavirus spreads throughout the US, it is disrupting many medical association meetings and conferences. After much thought and discussion, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the MFA Regional Conferences in Elkhart, IN (April 15-17) and Jackson, TN (May 20-22) and we will not be planning a Northeast Regional Conference for June. With many of our MFA member facilities facing travel bans and increased pressure on their time as this health crisis is changing so rapidly, we felt it would be irresponsible to hold an event at this time for our members and sponsors. If you had registered for either Conference, we are currently processing full refunds this week. If you paid via credit card, we will refund the card. If you paid via check, we will issue you a refund check.

We will hold our online Regional Conference on Thursday, March 26, with four webinars that day. Everyone is welcome! We are also reaching out to our Regional Conference speakers to see if they would be interested in sharing their knowledge in a future MFA webinar. We currently have two more webinars scheduled for March 18 and 25. Stay tuned to our website and email for a webinar update. As your Medical Fitness Association, we are doing everything we can to offer you multiple opportunities for your continuing education!

At this time, our Annual Conference, to be held in Baltimore, MD on Nov 3-5, is still on. We will continue to diligently monitor this situation through the CDC. If anything changes, we will let you know immediately. In light of this unknown, we are pleased to offer a 100% risk-free cancellation policy for our 2020 Annual Conference. If the Annual Conference needs to be cancelled, you will receive a 100% refund of your registration fee. We will endeavor to make that decision by October 2nd. At this point, we have a robust agenda and look forward to some great networking!

While member facilities have increased their outreach to their own members, we encourage you to work with your facility’s or hospital’s marketing/public relations department. This is an opportunity to support your local community by reassuring them on how you are handling the coronavirus and to support your members who are putting their memberships on hold by providing them with ideas for exercising at home. It’s also an opportunity to raise awareness in your community as a medical fitness thought leader. Here are a couple examples:

Article on a fitness facility in CT: CLICK HERE

ACE’s article on “Top 25 At-Home Exercises”: CLICK HERE

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in our COVID-19 Response Survey. There is still time to participate in the survey. We will be sending out the preliminary results today. The full report will be sent out by this Friday, 3/20. One of the many benefits of being a Medical Fitness Association member is that you have the opportunity to learn what other medical fitness facilities are doing without handling the legwork yourself!