News

Welcome 2022 – Review and Outlook for the Association
Election of a new Board in 2021

Transfer of the Board, from left to right: Anke Heilmann, Andreas Wähnert, Maria Barthel and Sonja Ritter
At our last Annual General Meeting on 2 October 2021, Anke Heilmann and Heike Isbruch stepped down from their roles as President and Vice-President of our Board after a successful term of 10 years. We would like to take this opportunity to thank them yet again for their commitment and ded-ication! Andreas Wähnert and Stefan Süpke will continue in their roles as treasurer and auditor re-spectively. We would like to thank both of them as well for continuing to support us as new Board members.
Activities
In 2022, our association will celebrate its 20th anniversary, which makes it the oldest Glut1 support association in Europe. In her presentation of our association at the 3rd European Glut1 Conference in 2021, Heike Osborne gave an excellent summary of our achievements over the last two dec-ades. The focus has been on supporting the affected families in all areas by connecting them with other families, with doctors, dieticians and food companies. We have also shared valuable infor-mation through our forum (https://forum.glut1.de/), the instant exchange in our chat group, and last but not least at our annual highlight: the family meetings in Bad Sachsa, which are privately organ-ised events and subsidised by the association. The Jubi-Haus there will once again be at our dis-posal from 25 to 29 May 2022. We sincerely hope that we will be able to celebrate our association’s major anniversary with you there this year. To tide us over until then, there will be more online talks organised by our Austrian members, Teresa Ölz and Maria Luise Florineth.
One of the central topics for most Glut1 patients is the ketogenic diet, and a primary goal of our association is to support families in their life with the diet. This includes raising awareness about what living with the ketogenic diet means on a day-to-day basis. For instance, around Christmas we hold annual fund-raisers that showcase brief episodes from the life of a Glut1 child. The fund-raisers end with the distribution of keto treats that make children’s eyes light up. The latest achievement of the German Glut1 Association is the EpiCook app. With this convenient app, you can calculate recipes and save them on the go. It is also an excellent opportunity to introduce Glut1 teenagers to the preparation of ketogenic food.

Logo of the EpiCook app

Looking towards the future
We would like to build on all of this for the future of our association. Sonja Ritter and I will be repre-senting the association as Vice-President and President from now on and will continue the dedicat-ed work of our predecessors. If you want to find out more about us and our Glut1 histories, please take a look at the member introductions area of our forum. We look forward to telling you more about ourselves at a future meeting, either in person or digitally.
Which other topics are important to you? Do you already have a project in mind or is there some-thing you are particularly good at which you would like to contribute to the association? As you can see from the many names in this text (and they are far from all), an association like ours comes alive through its members. As a Board, we can pull the threads together, but we need all of you to spin exciting, new threads! Please e-mail us, call us or contact us via Signal. We look forward to sharing the coming years with you!