Title: Minutes of the Mid-Year IH Section Meeting
Author:
Section/SPIG: International Health
Issue Date:
The mid-year meeting of the IH section was held on May 27, 2003, at a dinner during the Annual Conference of the Global Health Council in Washington, DC. Ray Martin chaired the meeting. Highlights inclued the following agenda items.
1. IH Program at Annual Meeting - Marty Makinen, Program Committee Chair, reported on abstract submissions. (See Marty’s report in this newsletter.)
2. Advocacy - Chuck Woolery, IH advocacy coordinator, briefed the meeting on recent events and issues. Ray Martin reported that he was privileged to attend this very day President Bush’s signing of the $15 billion authorization for the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Chuck noted that in the present era of scarce resources coupled with increasing demands, an increased focus and funding for one area (e.g. HIV/AIDS) invariably comes at the expense of another priority area.
3. Community-Based Primary Health Care Working Group - The C-BPHC group has been having pre-APHA workshops for several years (see Kate Tulenko’s note in this newsletter for information about the 2003 workshop in San Francisco.) Two books on the subject were also made available for sale at the meeting by the group.
4. History of International Health and the Section in APHA - Ray Martin gave a briefing on the research on the history of the IH Section and of APHA’s evolving interest in international health. A $15,000 grant was secured to publish a short history and to sponsor sessions at the San Francisco Annual Meeting.
5. World Health Assembly (WHA) - Allen Jones briefed the meeting on the proceedings of the WHA meeting that he attended. He informed the meeting that the tobacco treaty was passed and that the new Director General of WHO, Dr. Lee of South Korea, was introduced.
6. Newsletter - Josefa Ippolito-Shepherd thanked the membership for their support during the five years that she edited the newsletter. She requested members to submit articles for the Fall Issue Newsletter. Members expressed their appreciation to Josefa for her service to the Section.
7. Membership – The meeting participants were informed that the total membership of the IH Section stood at 1,450. More than 50 members were lost this year. Efforts to attract more students were under way.
8. Awards Committee - Kate Tulenko, new Committee Chair, told meeting participants that there has been a complete turnover of committee membership. Mid-Career , Lifetime Achievement, and Special Recognition Awards are planned. Nomination forms are available on the Section’s Web site, <www.apha-ih.org>. Members were urged to submit nominations.
9. APHA Policy Review Process - The meeting participants were informed that APHA has a policy review process for resolutions. Because there was no sunset policy, resolutions dating as far back as 50 years were still on the books. Two IH Governing Councilors, Diana Silemperi and Julia Walsh, are giving leadership to the Section’s participation in this process to improve APHA’s policy statements.
10. Public Education - Ed Elmendorf reported on discussions within the IH Section about launching intentional efforts to educate the American public and policy leaders about global health and the relevance of international health to America’s interests. Working with groups like the UN Association and World Affairs Councils is being explored.
11. DC area Global Health Interest Group - IH Section members in the DC Metro area, Julie Hantman and Curt Swezy, were giving leadership to this new regional group that is meeting once a month. Although APHA membership is not required for participation, the group is loosely affiliated with the IH Section. In addition to the new DC group, there are active chapters in the Seattle and San Francisco areas.
12. Future Direction - There was a discussion on future directions for the IH Section and on increasing membership. Some points included:
- We should play an active role in public education and advocacy. We should assess as to what input are we giving towards supporting these areas;
- We should critically assess lack of growth in our membership and ask what we are offering to the membership as against their expectations;
- Our members in academia should target students and faculty members for new membership. We should proactively interact with the schools of public health. Membership dues may be a deterrent to student participation;
- We need to reach out to other APHA Sections and take the lead in bringing key IH issues to the top of APHA’s agenda; and
- The use of conference calls between Annual Meetings to help keep IH members engaged was discussed.