Title: Minutes of CHPPD Conference Call
Author:
Section/SPIG: Community Health Planning and Policy Development
Issue Date:
Friday, April 30, 2004; 3:00 - 4:20 p.m.
Next CHPPD calls: July 30 and Sept. 24, 2004, 3 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
PRESENT: Monica Chan, Judy Gorbach, Priti Irani, Lara Jones, Patricia Kelly, Paul Meissner, Darrell Montgomery, Harry Perlstad, Tom Piper, Peter Rizik, Islara Souto, Karen Valenzuela, Mara Yarow
1. Committee Updates:
Nominations (Paul Meissner): Successful getting nominations, and was able to convince almost all members to apply. Slate published in the May issue of The Nation's Health. Daryl and Pat Kelley are also on phone call. Two candidates for chair elect and for secretary elect. 2 of 4 for section elect. We have 4 candidates for governing council. Paul wished all candidates well, and hoped even if candidates were not selected, they would continue to work with CHPPD.
Program (Judy Gorbach): Will email Paul with information on number of students participated. Asked for guidance on dealing with one of the invited sessions that had 4 of its five papers reviewed with poor ratings. Members agreed that Judy should tell the chair of the session that their session was not approved, and would ask the chair to talk to the author of the one paper that was acceptable to merge with another session as this author was presenting a similar paper.
Paul suggested developing a program committee (3-5 people) with defined functions, rather than just consult with program chair as is done now. Make up and function of the program committee, and abstract format will be discussed at the business meeting. Judy Gorbach worked with about 100 reviewers, and received between 350-360 abstracts. Judy transferred 16 and will be rejecting approximately 50. The rest will be in poster sessions, round tables and oral/scientific sessions. Each reviewer read between 10 -15 abstracts. Paul acknowledged the strength of this group, and reiterated the need for a strong program committee.
Policy (Harry Perlstad): The Science board and APHA Joint Policy Committee (JPC) met this week. They are developing a way to submit policy statements online starting next year. The online form would ask for title, problem, proposed strategy or solution, alternative to consider, action to be taken etch. This would ensure more consistent policy information. Harry was advised to ensure that in the online process, that there was place for conversation among secondary council. This format would be on a one year of trial. All sections have been asked to review policy in their area, and suggest what should be archived.
Newsletter (Tom Piper and Priti Irani): Tom began by praising the creative work Priti has been doing. Tom and Priti discussed ways to improve the newsletter and webpage. Priti recounted their discussion: Currently has five regular items: Message from the Chair; From the Desk of the Webmaster; From the Public Health Student Caucus; Committee Updates; and CHPPD Closing Thoughts. Some suggestions to consider for next time:
(1) Add 'Headings' to each regular item to make them more interesting;
(2) Explore adding pictures, graphs, charts;
(3) Solicit articles from at least two new CHPPD members (not currently involved in committees) regarding what they do, or resources they have to share;
(4) Explore feasibility of adding information on "networking" opportunities;
(5) Add newsletter deadlines and submission process. Priti will email the conference call participants the guidance developed, and they would be contacting the regular contributors to submit articles by the deadline, May 16th. Editors are sensitive to using mailing lists, and at the same time would like to encouraging networking among members. Talked about problems with the list-serv and ways to use it and fix it. It was stated that we will send out all meeting minutes to all CHPPD personnel. Distribution of information was stated as an issue.
Karen Valenzuela suggested getting information from members on CHPPD member activities within their affiliates. Paul said that someone from CDC would be calling Tom about putting information regarding a conference presentation. Pat Kelly said she subscribed to online letters such as Homeland Security and found the events section interesting. Mara was concerned that putting articles may imply that CHPPD is endorsing events. Monica suggested adding a disclaimer. Paul suggested having a newsletter committee (2-3 people) who would decide what is appropriate. Members requested getting email notification when the newsletter was posted. There was a suggestion to encourage members to join the listserv and to send out at least one postcard encouraging people to check if their email address was correctly listed with APHA. Paul suggested using the blast email route.
Student (Report from Amy Carroll sent to Paul): Sent email to student caucus email. And will have poster session this year. Through Public Health Student Caucus newsletter has written article. Contacted Student Caucus representative and shared that CHPPD would be interested in participating in activities.
Membership: No report. EmyLou Solomon apologized for not being able to participate in the call.
Conference Planning: Peter Rizik volunteered to be the local CHPPD “Party Coordinator”/liaison for the DC meeting. Paul asked if the banner could be mailed to someone in DC. Have stuff for booth? Please let Monica know what CHPPD events members would like to highlight. Monica and Peter were to communicate re logistics. Suggestion to distribute the review and update CHPPD irreverent guide, as it is a good recruitment tool, and the DC conference usually has more attendees. Paul will submit booth registration and ask to be next to Health Administration for booth.
2. Presentation of APHA Initiatives:
Paul said Task Force on Aging was looking for liaison. Peter Rizik volunteered. He will complete the survey by May 10; talk with Judy Gorbach about Aging activities about CHPPD and few other folks. A couple of CHPPD members agreed they were very impressed with the organization of the Task Force on Aging and should be a model for how to run a task force. Peter's responsibilities are to share information from meeting with the Task Force on Aging at the conference calls, and follow-up with information/requests as appropriate
Deadline on Section Awards. Deadline is July 5th. Yukiko Ann Umemoto is Awards Chair. Paul will send it out to everyone on Friday, April 30. Awards given out in past on CHPPD web page.
3. Executive Board Update: (Karen Valenzuela)
Reported that the EB has not met since last meeting on Jan 30th. March conference call was cancelled, as there were no action items. Will be meeting in May in Atlanta, CDC. They recently had a conference call with CDC to comment and provide feedback on recent strategic planning/restructuring effort.
4. Question on nominating process:
CHPPD does not support Epi Section's proposal to open up slate of candidates to unlimited number for the following reasons:
a) We have had just one election year so far under the new election process. While we understand not all questions and uncertainties about the new process have answers yet, we think it's too soon to add even more changes. Let's let the current process work for a reasonable length of time before we make any more changes, particularly a change as potentially confusing as this!
b) Section 3, Article IX of APHA's Bylaws already provides a way for
additional candidates to be proposed to the Governing Council outside of the regular nominating process: "Upon the petition of any twenty voting members of the Governing Council submitted to the Association office no less than 40 days prior to the Annual Meeting, such Nominating Committee shall add to the list of candidates selected by it the name of any eligible candidate for the office specified in such petition..." Thus, if the Epi Section, for example, has a particular nominee they would like to become a candidate but who the Nominating Committee has not included on its slate of candidates, the Epi Section could gather the signatures of 20 Governing Councilors on a petition to the Nominating Committee, which would compel the Nominating Committee to then include this candidate on its slate.
c) The main job of the Nominating Committee is to sift through and choose for candidacy those individuals nominated for Association office --and some years, the list of nominees is quite lengthy! Each year, the Nominating Committee devises its own process and methods for doing this job --i.e., establishes eligibility criteria, minimum thresholds, ranks the nominees, assures diversity, etc.). CHPPD feels that compelling the Nominating Committee to present as broad a slate as possible of what could become an unlimited number of candidates circumvents the process. The Committee should be allowed to do its job.
d) Finally, an unlimited number of candidates would make the campaign process unwieldy and chaotic. Sections and affiliates would be forced to limit the number of candidates permitted to make presentations to their groups in order to preserve enough time to conduct their own business. Candidates could be elected to Executive Board with very few votes (choosing the top three vote-getters) if the slate contained many candidates.
Paul will send in his response on nominating process to Sarah by end of week of May 3.
- Notes by Priti Irani, Secretary
Submitted May 3, 2004