ATOD Program Chair Article

By Lawrence S. Brown, Jr, MD, MPH, FASAM, ATOD Program Chair

As I approach the Autumn of my tenure as program chair, I am pleased to share with you important developments. As of this writing, we are on track to obtain continuing education credit for all 28 ATOD oral sessions on the first round of review. Fourteen sessions have been reviewed, and all have been approved for continuing education credit. This year, there is a separate review for Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES) continuing education credit. Of five sessions reviewed so far, all have been approved. We see no reason why all 28 won’t be approved for MCHES continuing education credit.

We offered to co-sponsor 81 sessions (same as last year) from 29 Sections, Caucuses, Forums, and Special Interest Groups. All 81 were accepted. We requested 160 co-sponsorships from 24 Sections, Caucuses, Forums, and Special Interest Groups (compared to 93 requests last year), and obtained 126 approvals (compared to 65 last year). 

This year and last, we actively solicited co-sponsorships via email.  This year, the emails stressed the fact that in 2010, all oral sessions received continuing education credit, and we expected the same for 2011. Whether this made a difference or not is difficult to determine, given the fact that we ended up with between one and five co-sponsors for every ATOD session, whether oral or poster even though poster sessions are not eligible for continuing education credit.

In the spring newsletter, areas for improvement were discussed in general. With the 2011 program nearly complete, a more focused approach to improving the process will be discussed. However, none of this would have been possible had the number and quality of the abstracts and sessions been anything less than stellar.  In closing, I am compelled to offer some final comments regarding the special persons who made my tenure easier. Our Section Chair, Linda Bosma, was crucial in my transition from her superb tenure as program chair. Steve Kritz single-handedly increased our Section’s continuing education and endorsement profile. I want to thank everyone for their input at every level. I hope to see many of you in Washington to personally thank you. As the baton (and the position of program chair) will be handed to Linda Frazier at the end of the 2011 APHA Annual Meeting, the challenge now is to support her to raise the bar even higher in 2012.