2011 Midyear Update from Dr. Rand Baird

Submitted by Rand Baird, DC, MPH

Chiropractic Health Care Dynamic Chiropractic Column Editor

I am going to become a dentist!  Why, you may ask, at this point in my career and at my age?  Well, it is because of the “Chiropractic in the APHA” column in Dynamic Chiropractic! ?!   Huh?  Yes, because getting articles contributed from CHC Section members IS LIKE PULLING TEETH!  So I may as well become a dentist! 

The CHC Section Council votes annually to continue our participation in the Dynamic Chiropractic column.  It is our single biggest source of extramural visibility, and thus a factor in new member recruitment and in member retention.  We have so many talented authors, and public health is such a wide umbrella, that I should not have to beg and plead for contributions for our six allotted spots each year.  Drs. Dougherty, Johnson, Green, Egan, Darragh, Schneider, Killinger, and I have recently contributed, but how about the rest of you?   Unfortunately, right now I have no articles in queue.   One article is scheduled to go to print next month and after that the bucket is empty again.  So c’mon….send me something good, now! Please email your materials to drrandbaird@yahoo.com

For this edition of the CHC Newsletter, I have been asked, “What have you been doing to further the integration of public health and chiropractic through APHA lately?”  It is a fair question, one we should all ask ourselves periodically. Here is what has happened for this year so far:

Our APHA-CHC membership, the extra knowledge we acquire because of it, the professional contact network we develop participating in it, and by attending annual meetings are personally enriching and bring rich rewards to our entire profession that would not have happened otherwise. Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of APHA, has been a lead-off speaker at the WFC Biennial Congress in 2009 and recently at ACC-RAC in 2010. This would not have happened if he had not previously become acquainted with Mitch Haas and me year after year at APHA and then accepted our personal invitation.

I had very briefly met Vice-Admiral Regina Benjamin, MD, the U.S. Surgeon General, when she spoke at an APHA Annual Meeting shortly after her appointment.  Then I waved at her at a World Health Organization annual meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in 2010. She knew I looked familiar so stopped to say hello and I introduced her to the WFC delegation.  We chatted about APHA and chiropractic at length and a friendship developed.  Then Kathy Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, and Mary Wakefield, Director of HRSA, saw us chatting with the Surgeon General and came over to join us.  Do you think these contacts have helped our profession?  Would they have been possible without APHA involvement and the communications and credibility we have established through the vehicle of APHA?  By the way, these three highest officials in the U.S. government health positions have all made pro-chiropractic comments in public during the past two years.  And last month again in Geneva at WHO, Surgeon General Benjamin and her staff assistant joined me and other WFC delegates for a private coffee and orange juice morning chat where we discussed future roles for chiropractors in government health programs. Active participation in APHA is essential to building bridges and developing these important relationships.

The annual WHO World No Tobacco Day was held on May 31.  APHA is a strong supporter of the WHO cabinet level anti-tobacco efforts.  For the past 18 months I have been a full professor at the International Medical University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  At my request, the university president issued a “Presidential Proclamation of Support” for No Tobacco Day and in support of WHO and Malaysian government efforts to reduce smoking.  Press releases were sent to the Malaysian media. Our chiropractic students were told about the effort in their public health lectures and reprinted the WFC CAT (Chiropractors Against Tobacco) posters plus some others from the internet and worked with our Marketing and Communications departments to set up a display in the university atrium and at other high visibility areas on campus.  It is noteworthy that although IMU is a private university and has a full medical school, pharmacy program, dental program, nursing, public health, medical technology, Chinese medicine, and several allied health degree programs, the only program that had high-profile participation in World No Tobacco Day was the chiropractic program!  But already several of the department heads of these programs have approached us about a multidisciplinary joint effort for 2012, which is wonderful.  They now know that chiropractic is not only specialized care for NMS disorders and ‘subluxation’ reduction but also primary care, and concern and expertise in broader public health efforts towards wellness.

So far, that is what I have done for this year.  However, please don’t say, “Nice work, Rand!”  Instead say, “What could I do to accomplish similar things?”   Then do it!  We will do well if we all contribute something!