Title: Changing trends of abstracts submitted for the CHPPD session at APHA

Author:

Section/SPIG: Community Health Planning and Policy Development

Issue Date:

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Both current events and the growth of new sections in APHA affect our CHPPD sessions in a direct way. In the past few years we have received many abstracts on the subjects of HIV/AIDS and bioterrorism. HIV/AIDS now has its own section so we received very few abstracts on this subject this year. The same applies to bioterrorism. We will have only one poster session on HIV/AIDS and a partial poster session on bioterrorism. However, the growth of interest in nutrition, diabetes and asthma is clearly reflected in our sessions, both in invited sessions and contributed abstracts. For the first time we have a session on "Engaging African American/Black men in prevention and healthcare."

As always we have some outstanding abstracts in the sessions on methodological techniques and tools, health promotion and disease prevention and partnerships. I try to ladder sessions on similar topics so individuals interested in a subject are able to go to all the sessions we have scheduled on their topic of interest.

Managed care, issues of Medicare, universal health coverage, and health care disparities continue to grow in submissions and therefore scheduled sessions. Many of our abstracts reflect how environment, this year's theme, affects issues of community health.