The Disability Section Awards Call for Nominations has closed for the 2011 meeting. The Awards Committee is in the process of scoring and selecting the nominees for this year’s awards that will be given out during the Business Meeting and Awards Ceremony on Monday evening, Oct. 31, 2011, at the APHA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Specific information about the room number and meeting time will be posted on the APHA website closer to the date of the meeting. The 2012 Disability Section Awards Call for Nominations will be advertised starting in Spring 2012 for the following awards: 1) Lifetime Achievement Award; 2) Allan Meyers Award; 3) Advocacy Award; 4) New Investigator Award; 5) Student Member Award.

Membership Update-Dot Nary, PhD, Membership Chair

The Recruitment Team

In 2007, after much work by members of the Disability Section leadership, the Disability Special Primary Interest Group enrolled enough members to become a full-fledged section of APHA. With that growth came privileges — including representation on the APHA Executive Council and the return of a portion of our members’ dues for Section use — as well as responsibilities. One of these responsibilities is to maintain and grow our membership so that we retain our hard-won Section status.

For that reason, I am asking that all Disability Section members take their team membership seriously — because we are all members of the RECRUITMENT team!  Just think — if each of our 252 primary members recruited one friend, colleague, or student as members, our numbers would skyrocket!

Next month, each Section member will be sent several copies of our newly-revised Section brochure. This document clearly states our history, goals, activities and core values.  I hope that each member will consider one contact who would benefit from membership in the Disability Section and who would embrace our mission — and then make a pitch that person! 

I look forward to working with you to keep the Disability Section strong!

The Disability Section of APHA wrote statements of support for three proposed policies from other sections.  These included:

• Musculoskeletal disorders as a public health concern:  APHA response and action steps.  Our support statement requested that the Chiropractic Health Section expand its proposed policy from primary prevention to include promoting the health of people who have experienced disability related to musculoskeletal disorders.
• Prioritizing non communicable disease prevention and treatment in global health – Our support statement requested that the following bullet be added to the policy proposal, “Target populations such as culturally disadvantaged groups, people with disabilities, people residing in rural or other isolated settings, medically underserved groups, etc. who are likely to experience health disparities in non communicable diseases.”
• Global Campaign to Eliminate Avoidable Blindness (update of existing Policy # 2016).  Our support statement requested that the Vision Care Section add the following bullet to the proposed policy:  “The broader health needs of individuals who already experience vision loss or blindness should be addressed by providing accessible health care and alternative formats for health communications (large print; audio formats; Braille) as needed.”