At one point in the proceedings, Alan Pack, MD, PhD, looked down at me from the dais. He asked what the American Sleep Apnea Association was going to do to improve the situation of U.S. truckers with respect to diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up for obstructive sleep apnea, which is estimated to affect 30 percent of American truckers.

Dr. Pack was prescribing a tall order, but I knew at once that we would not shy away from the assignment. The American Sleep Apnea Association's mission is to reduce injury, disability, and death from sleep apnea and to enhance the lives of those living with the condition.

This was the genesis of the ASAA's 2010 Sleep Apnea and Trucking Conference, (www.satc2010.org). The conference was a landmark event. Before then, no meeting had ever been held that brought together representatives from all the trucking industry stakeholders (company executives, regulators, occupational medicine physicians, and truckers) with the professional sleep community (physicians, dentists, and service providers) for a day-long meeting. The goal was to promote a common understanding about sleep apnea and to provide information about the options available for diagnosis and treatment.

We had achieved our goal of getting the right people together to talk about sleep apnea. I believe our efforts helped to get more drivers diagnosed and effectively treated.

Based on the success of the first meeting, we organized a second event in 2011: the Sleep Apnea and Multi-modal Transportation Conference, (www.samtc2011.org), held in November. The conference expanded beyond trucking to include other modes of transportation: rail, aviation, marine, and transit. We brought together stakeholders from transportation and sleep professionals with the objective of understanding what the various modes were doing to address sleep apnea from regulatory, diagnostic, and treatment standpoints.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which also sponsored the previous year's meeting, and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) co-sponsored the conference.

Over two days, attendees heard more than 20 speakers representing government, occupational medicine physicians, sleep and fatigue researchers and clinicians, and the affected industries. Highlights included keynote addresses from Jim Hall, former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), on the importance of addressing sleep apnea-related fatigue as a means of preventing accidents, and Anne Ferro, administrator of the FMCSA, who provided an update on efforts within the U.S. Department of Transportation to address sleep apnea and fatigue.

On the second day of the conference, Don Osterberg of Schneider National challenged those present in the room to address the issue of screening, diagnosing, and effectively treating the operators of the various modes, particularly truckers, for sleep apnea. The tools are available, and the time for simply thinking about it has passed, he said.

Last year's conference was the first of its kind. This year's conference also had a first - a roundtable discussion by medical personnel from four national agencies regulating transportation: the FMCSA, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FRA, and the Coast Guard. The session was moderated by Mitch A. Garber, MD, former medical director of the NTSB. The agency representatives reported how their agencies are addressing the identification of sleep apnea in their mode. That was followed by an illuminating question-and-answer session. Dr. Garber concluded the session with an echo of Osterberg's earlier call to action: Let's get this done.

The last session of the conference was moderated by Mark Rosekind, a member of the NTSB and a long-time researcher in the area of sleep and fatigue. Rosekind questioned a panel of six speakers about the road ahead for diagnosis, treatment, and compliance monitoring for sleep apnea. The speakers, representing sleep medicine, occupational medicine, and federal regulation, had distinctive perspectives, but there was general agreement that the time had come to address sleep apnea in the transportation workplace.

Ed Grandi is the executive director of the American Sleep Apnea Association.