Greetings and best wishes for a healthy and productive 2009!
Thank you to everyone who assisted in organizing and who participated this past October in the APHA Annual Meeting in San Diego. The Gerontological Health Section (GHS) sponsored 27 scientific sessions at the meeting, and co-sponsored several additional sessions with other Sections, SPIGs and Caucuses. Sessions focused on caregiving, long-term care, nursing home and hospice issues, successful aging, the environment and aging, and translating aging research into practice, among many topics.
A critical part of our Annual Meeting is the awards and social activities. At our awards session, we recognized Drs. Carroll Estes, Fernando Torres-Gil and Etsuji Okamoto, recipients of our Leadership Awards. We also recognized the recipients of our scientific research awards. Connie Evaschwik announced our newest scientific research award, the Erickson Foundation Award for Excellence in Research, funded by the Erickson Foundation. Additional information related to the award and the process for award application and review is available in this newsletter, as well as the GHS Web site:
(http://www.apha.org/membergroups/sections/aphasections/gh/).
The Awards Brochure is available on the GHS Web site (http://swallace.bol.ucla.edu/GHS_Awards_Brochure2008.pdf ). It provides additional information related to out awards recipients, as well as individuals who contributed to awards selection and the Section. A big thank you to Jennifer Curry for editing the Awards Program.
To celebrate our 30th Anniversary as a Section of APHA, we celebrated with cake at the reception. We also held our ninth auction and raffle, featuring crystal, Georgia pottery, pewter items and many others. To date, over $43,000 has been raised through this event to support endowments of Section Research Awards.
Photographs of the Awards Session, reception and auction are available on our GHS Web site:
(http://www.apha.org/membergroups/sections/aphasections/gh/Resources/).
A special thanks to Fox Wetle for serving as photographer.
Thank you to Jan Warren-Findlow, Ashley Love and Rachel Seymour for organizing our program. As awards chair, Caryn Etkin coordinated the selection of award recipients for our numerous Section awards. Steve Wallace and Susan Miller stepped in to coordinate the raffle and auction, as well as organizing Sunday’s dinner. Gerry Eggert gathered many items for the auction and raffle, and other Section members generously provided items as well. Many Section members organized the review of individual awards, reviewed manuscripts for awards, and reviewed abstracts for the scientific sessions. Thank you to all!
Our Annual Meeting will be held this coming Nov. 7-11 in Philadelphia. Abstracts are due Feb. 13. The Call for Abstracts highlights areas of interest. The Call also describes the several Scientific Awards we will select and the process for having an abstract considered for an award. Elections will occur late spring. GHS will be electing a chair-elect, secretary, Governing Council representative and two GHS Section Councilors. Thank you to those who have volunteered to run and to Chair-Elect Susan Miller for coordinating the election.
Thank you to everyone who has expressed an interest in becoming more active with the Section. If you would like to become more active in Section activities, please e-mail me at nanmille@umbc.edu. We need individuals to review abstracts, review manuscripts for awards, develop policy positions, increase membership, raise support for Section awards, contribute to the newsletter and much more!