As many APHA members are aware, the official stance taken by APHA on a variety of issues is based upon its written and approved policies. These policies are frequently generated and written by APHA members, and voted upon at the APHA Annual Meeting. Once adopted, they inform the Association and its members as to the official stance of APHA and help inform advocacy efforts. These policies are therefore critical to the relevance of APHA to current and historical events, and as an advocacy guide at the local, national and even global level.

There is a recognized need within APHA to ensure that existing and proposed policies are not only relevant, but also scientifically accurate. To that end, proposed and existing policies are subject to general member and Governing Council review before voting and adoption, or archiving if outdated or superseded. In order to make policy review, and even new policy development, as scientifically sound as possible, subject matter experts are often engaged. However, it is frequently difficult to find subject matter experts to review policies due for possible archiving, and also to review proposed policies for accuracy. While such expertise likely resides within APHA membership, it is difficult to find and engage such members through the current process.

The Epi Section Expertise Database was created to address this issue. In April 2011, a Section-wide e-mail was sent to all Epi Section members, asking them to submit their name, degrees, general and specific specialties, affiliation and preferred contact method. Data from the replies were placed into a spreadsheet that can be used to find individuals with a general or specific expertise (e.g. chronic disease epidemiology). This first outreach resulted in 121 replies. Academic degrees reported include a large number of PhDs, MDs, and MPHs, as well as an assortment of other degrees less frequently associated with epidemiology, including MDiv, MBA, DrPH, JD and DNP. While many reported epidemiology as their general specialization, others listed health administration, biostatistics and medicine. Epidemiology was frequently qualified into more specific categories, such as infectious or chronic disease, health disparity, preventive medicine, cancer and cancer prevention. Finally, the specific specializations ran the full gamut of what one may expect, including such areas as sexually transmitted infections, racial health disparities, drug and alcohol abuse, medical topics (e.g. psychiatrics, pediatrics), foodborne pathogens, diabetes, and pregnancy-related health issues.   

We hope that this database will be of use for a variety of purposes. First, we hope that will be useful as a resource to APHA as a whole to assist with the development of policies. Authors may be able to identify a specific subject matter expert to provide policy review and guidance upon request. Second, we hope that it may be useful to APHA and sections during the annual policy review seasons. Again, it may be easier to judge the accuracy and relevancy of a policy more easily if a subject matter expert can be found to provide an objective yet thorough review. Finally, we hope that this may become a mechanism to engage more members in both the policy process and APHA as a whole. Many members are already busy with their current positions and other activities and do not make a point of volunteering for work for their Section, or even participate in their Section’s conference calls and activities. However, this does not necessarily mean that they are unwilling to lend their expertise and spend some of their time if they believe that it will be for a worthwhile reason. By releasing their information into this database, members agree to be contacted for such occasions. The database should hopefully become a win-win situation for all parties: APHA will have organized source of available expertise, and members will have a means to become more involved when the request matches their interests.