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| Chair Amy Carroll-Scott facilitating the section business meeting in Denver. Photo Courtesy: Amy Carroll-Scott |
Every year our Section has difficulty encouraging new and existing members to attend our business meetings at the Annual Meeting. This year our esteemed and effective outgoing chair, Priti Irani, agreed with Section leadership to frame the Section’s business meetings around the topic of “ social determinants of health ”. It emerged as a topic priority in the 2010 member survey; was discussed in Healthy People 2020 feedback; and is a topic that represents our membership in that it embraces broad community interests, social justice and policy work.
The response was dramatic. More than 40 members showed up at the general business meeting on Sunday morning in Denver, and another 40 to the student and new member meeting in the afternoon. I’d guess about half were folks who had never attended a Section business meeting before. The discussion was energized, and creative. CHPPD members are very engaged in efforts to address social determinants of health (SDOH) in their communities, and a value added from the Section would be activities that support them in this work.
A number of interesting suggestions followed. Among them are:
· Distribute and promote helpful toolkits that already exist, such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “A New Way to Talk About Social Determinants of Health”, the CDC’s “Promoting Health Equity: A Resource to Help Communities Address Social Determinants of Health” and of course the WHO’s call to action, "Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity through Action on the Social Determinants of Health”.
· Write a white paper that frames SDOH from an APHA perspective and highlights best practices on the community level.
· Collect CHPPD member experiences and expertise around addressing SDOH in their work and communities. The benefit would be to better inventory and represent our Section members’ expertise and leadership to APHA, so that our colleagues could be called on for policy and media matters on these and related issues. This effort would also collect best practices that could be shared with all members to inform their own work, as well as for the benefit of a white paper or APHA policy.
· Consider new Section awards or invited sessions to promote and support innovative community SDOH efforts.
Members discussed ideas for work we could do as a Section between Annual Meetings. Although many have voiced a need for local networking and collaboration, or mid-year activities, organizing such activities in a sustainable way has been a challenge for CHPPD and other sections. However, since SDOH is such a unifying issue for our membership, perhaps now is the time? Suggestions included a national day of service related to SDOH tied together by a “virtual village”, with the purpose of an awareness-raising activity that people can enact in their local communities while being connected to a larger effort. A new idea for capturing the energy at the Annual Meeting is to organize a day of service in Washington, D.C., this November where members would partner with a local organization to provide service to a D.C. community, such as a neighborhood clean-up or playground building. CHPPD members felt they wanted to move beyond a tour of effective, local SDOH-related activities, by organizing how we can contribute to them.
Out of these great ideas are a few that our membership and leaders will be able to rally around this year, so stay tuned. A SDOH workgroup has already been formed and is off and running! And so my first appeal to you as your new chair is to make social determinants of health an excuse to become more engaged in your Section this year. The ideas shared above are ones that will require all of us to dedicate some thought and time, even if it’s just to complete a survey about effective strategies you and your colleagues are employing to address SDOH in your communities. Now is the time of year for New Year’s resolutions. This year I resolve to work with you to capitalize on this opportunity for action in our Section, by ensuring CHPPD is both more active within APHA and supportive of the work we are all doing in the communities we serve.
If you have thoughts about these suggested SDOH activities or would like to join the SDOH workgroup, please contact Tammy Pilisuk or Elena Ong. All are welcome! For more information about upcoming Section teleconference calls, previous call minutes, and committee and workgroup activities and works-in-progress, please visit the Section website at http://www.chppd.org and join the CHPPD Insider wiki at http://chppdweb.wetpaint.com.
Yours in health,
Amy
Amy Carroll-Scott, PhD, MPH
Chair, Community Health Planning and Policy Development Section