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| Priti Irani (left) with APHA Section Affairs Liaison Sharon McCarthy at the Newsletter Editors Meeting in Philadelphia |
What do you think was the single-most factor that made the Fall issue the most read of the Community Health Planning and Policy Development (CHPPD) newsletters? I am referring to the articles "CHPPD's Fall Newsletter was the 2005 Wow Issue" in this newsletter. There was a 24% increases in visitors to the newsletter. In all, the CHPPD newsletter had 91 visitors in June, 386 visitors in Fall and 129 visitors in November for the special annual meeting issue. The number of pages viewed also jumped proportionately in Fall by 24%. My hypothesis is that newsletter readership is a indicator of membership involvement. More than 100 members completed the survey sent out in August. About half a dozen members sent in requests to post articles related to events and conferences. So when the newsletter was published, they were looking at the issue with a specific agenda in mind. It takes a interested village of "CHPPDers" to build an e-community.
Even so, the Fall newsletter was read by less than a quarter of the members who identify CHPPD as their primary section. Does that mean that less than a quarter of CHPPD members are paying membership dues and are not actively engaged in section and APHA activities? I don't know.
Here is an opportunity to test out the member involvement hypothesis. This Winter (January-February 2006) issue of the newsletter has about half a dozen new contributors. Thank you to all of you who contributed to this issue - Judy Gorbach, Karen Ho, Aubrey Lipham, Lara Jones, Tom Piper, Wendy Roy, John Steen, Holly Tutko, and Kathy Witgert. I expect the readership level to be between the numbers for the Fall and the November issue. Whether you agree with the hypothesis or not, would you please do consider writing a short article for the next newsletter. Submit photos, charts or graphs because as we know "it is worth more than a 1,000 words". The deadline for the next issue is May 12.
You may want to summarize work that you do, or bring our attention to some interesting journal articles. You may want to write a book or course review - I hope there will be at least one review article in every issue. We are also hoping to have a piece from a student perpective.
Or, you may want to react to an article in this issue, and write a letter to the editor. At the least, it will stop me from talking so much. I look forward to hearing from you.