APHA: Spring Section Updates


Advanced Search

APHA Home » Member Groups & Affiliates » Section & SPIG Newsletters » Section Newsletters » Epidemiology » Spring 2009 » Spring Section Updates

Title: Spring Section Updates

Author:

Section/SPIG: Epidemiology

Issue Date:

Spring Section Updates

The involvement and contributions of Section members, Section leaders, including students, and other professional partners from other sections and epidemiology societies continue to help to advance the mission of our section. Working with these colleagues and watching their work also inspires me, as Section chair.

So, it is not too early to gear up to get more involved with the Section. Fall is approaching quickly and, at the APHA Annual Meeting, newly-elected Section leaders take office and the leadership team begins again. So please contact us if you want to get involved.

Student Leadership Updates

Special thanks this year to our Section student leaders for their involvement. While it is often difficult for these leaders to participate in our monthly leadership conferences calls, these student leaders initiated evening conference calls each month to discuss Section business and student leadership projects. Please look for coming Student Corner articles in our newsletters. Student members interested in getting involved as leaders, please contact Dr. Hannah P. Yang, ScM, ScD hayang@jhsph.edu or any of the other student leaders listed on our Web site.

Section Elections

In late May, APHA elections notices were e-mailed to all Section members, asking Section members to use unique logins to vote for their choices for new section leadership openings for next year (Section chair-elect, Section secretary, Section Councilors and Section Governing Councilor positions were open). Thank you to all of those who stepped up to run for leadership this year! Thank you to those of you who already voted. Don’t miss this chance to choose these new leaders. Please check your e-mail and cast your vote electronically by the June deadline. If you have any questions or can’t find your ballot information, please contact Fran Atkinson or the election staff liaison at APHA.

Annual Meeting Updates

Program News: Thanks to all our abstract reviewers again this year for reviewing the work of peers and students. The Section Program Committee, led by co-Chairs, Drs. Karyn K. Heavner and Aaron Mendelsohn, has nearly completed its work organizing our sections’ Annual Meeting sessions, which cover a wide variety of topics, and APHA program organizers have recently sent e-mails to notify authors regarding the status of their submitted abstracts. The committee has organized a great array of invited sessions on important public health topics, including several specifically focused on the theme of the Annual Meeting, “Water and Public Health.” Don’t forget to look for the call for late-breaker abstracts, soon to be posted on the APHA Web site. Please consider submitting current hot topic abstracts soon. Information about the Epidemiology Section program so far is already posted on APHA’s Web site. Please see: http://apha.confex.com/apha/137am/webprogram/EPI.html

Section Business Meetings: For those of you traveling to Philadelphia, please also plan on attending at least one or more Epidemiology Section meetings on Saturday night, Nov. 7 (7-10 p.m.), Sunday night, Nov. 8 (6-10 p.m.), and bright and early Tuesday morning, Nov. 10, before the first 8:30 a.m. session. Come meet Section leaders, hear about current Section business, and make some new friends and professional contacts! Details about specific times and locations will be available in our fall newsletter, at the Section's Booth in the exhibit area at the conference, and on APHA’s Web site later.

Awards News: The three awards groups (Career, Public Health Practice and Student Awards groups) of the Section Awards Committee, led overall by Dr. Claudia A Kozinetz, are at work again, and we are excited with the award nominees now under consideration. For more information about any of the awards committees, please contact the corresponding chair: Dr. Kozinetz for the Career Awards (including the Abraham Lilienfeld, John Snow, and Wade Hamption Frost Awards), Dr. Kristopher P. Fennie for the Public Health Practice Awards (Early Career, Organizational Awards), and Dr. Karyn K. Heavner for Student Awards.

Again this year, we will be thrilled to honor our 2009 Section award winners in two award sessions: 1) the Career Awards Ceremony, featuring the Wade Hampton Frost Lecture and shorter lectures from our distinguished winners, to be held on Monday, Nov. 9 from 2:30-4 p.m.; and 2) a combined Student Awards Ceremony and Career Session to be held on Tuesday, Nov. 10from 4:30-6:00 p.m. Don’t forget, right after the Student Awards and Career Session, please plan on continuing the celebrations and networking with your colleagues and the Section leadership at the Section Social Tuesday evening (more details and the location to be forthcoming in the fall newsletter and at the Section Booth at the conference)! If you are a member in or around Philadelphia and would like to help the Section Social planning group, please contact me ASAP!

Policy and Advocacy Highlights

Our Section Governing Councilors and the Policy Committee have been active as well. Our section is involved in the APHA policy proposal and review process — not only as scientific reviewers but as co-authors on several policies proposed this year. Also, Section leadership is very active with the Joint Policy Committee of the Congress of Epidemiology 2011 — a joint epidemiology society policy and advocacy group formed several years ago with representatives from over 14 different epidemiology societies. This year so far, the group has contacted leading policy-makers for the federal Department of Health and Human Services to express our joint support for two important issues. First, we recommended that new comparative prevention effectiveness research funding from DHHS also fund research to evaluate public health initiative effectiveness. Second, we called for the secretary of DHHS to take action on the recent Institute of Medicine committee report that concluded that current HIPAA rules were not working as intended and recommended that HIPAA be substantially reformed to better protect patient confidentiality, reduce impediments to health research, and integrate better with human subject protections already in place under the federal Common Rule.

Membership and Communications Highlights

If you are not a member of the Section and wish to be, don’t forget, APHA now allows multiple section memberships. New this year are pro-rated memberships for any who have lapsed in their memberships! We welcome any colleagues from other sections to also join the Epidemiology Section and ask you to encourage your colleagues who are not members to join up!

As always, we are looking for your ideas and contributions for our quarterly newsletter. If you have an important announcement or would like to briefly highlight some important epidemiologic findings, please contact Mr. Oscar Allyne. The next deadline for newsletter items is in mid-September 2009.

Special thanks to the active work of our new Membership and Communications Committee. Among many activities, committee continues to work on implementing the Section e-Communities Web site, to arrive soon. Section leaders have spent the last few months testing out the site and are planning for APHA to open up our site in the next while. Briefly, e-Communities is an OPT-IN Web-based communication tool for Section members to interact with each other and with Section leaders in three different ways on specific topics: sharing news in “news areas,” discussing issues in topic-specific list-serve/blogs, and posting information and sharing documents on the bulletin board. We hope this will expand ways Section members can share information more freely with colleagues. We’re excited about our student Section leaders’ suggestion to organize areas on the site where student internships and fellowship opportunities can be readily posted as they become available. While we are not there yet, we hope that this and other opportunities will be ready to go soon. After APHA gives the Section the go-ahead, we will let you all know via blast e-mails and in coming newsletters to try it out!

It is shaping up to be another great year for the APHA Epidemiology Section and for your involvement! In these critical times, you cannot afford to miss the chance to lead and to participate in the scientific, public health policy and practice sessions coming up this fall!

Yours truly,

Dr. Jim Gaudino

Chair, Epidemiology Section

james.a.gaudino@state.or.us

Contact Information for several other section leaders:

(Please check http://www.apha.org/membergroups/sections/aphasections/epidemiology/roster/ for a complete list of contacts for section leaders):

Dr. Claudia A Kozinetz

Chair-Elect, Epidemiology Section and Chair, Section Awards Committee

kozinetz@bcm.edu

Dr. Stanley H. Weiss

Immediate Past Chair, Epidemiology Section

weiss@umdnj.edu and stan.weiss.74@aya.yale.edu