Title: Mentoring Program

Author:

Section/SPIG: HIV/AIDS

Issue Date:

The HIV/AIDS Section would like to inform you of the existence of a mentoring program for students and new investigators, the National Mentoring Program in Public Health (NMP). Many of you responded in the HIV/AIDS Section survey last November that you were interested in either being a mentor or being mentored. Thus, we thought it important to tell you about the NME, a project of the Public Health Student Caucus (PHSC), which is affiliated with APHA.

We encourage Section members who would like to mentor or be mentored to register with the NMP by completing a brief form found on their Web site at <http://www.phsc.org/nmp.htm>. NMP matches mentors and mentees continuously throughout the year on the following criteria: general area of interest, specific area of interest, three rank-ordered mentoring objectives, and vision of an ideal match. Matched participants will be notified as soon as an appropriate match is made and will be invited to participate in the program for one calendar year. Terms of the mentoring relationship (frequency of contact, activities to conduct, etc.) will be determined by the pair. The NMP will provide participants with a Mentoring Handbook that provides suggestions on how to develop and maintain a meaningful mentoring relationship with their match, but the primary focus of NMP is to facilitate an introduction between a mentee and mentor.

Mentors and mentees will have two opportunities to meet in person at this year's APHA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, although if they choose to do so, they may start working together well before the meeting. One opportunity in San Francisco will be following the Sunday business meeting of the HIV/AIDS Section on November 16th, and the other will be during the NME’s Mentoring Forum.

If you have any questions about the mentoring program that are not addressed on the NME Web site, please contact either the NME representatives, Cynthia Summers <mentoring1@phsc.org>, Mary Elizabeth O'Neil <mentoring2@phsc.org>, or Stephanie Taylor <sltaylor@ucla.edu>, the HIV/AIDS Section Membership Chair and Mentoring Program liaison.