Title: FROM THE CHAIR

Author:

Section/SPIG: Maternal and Child Health

Issue Date:

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Howard Spivak-MCH Section Chair

As this is the first newsletter since the Annual Meeting in San Francisco, I want to start by thanking everyone for their help and participation at the meetings. Our section activities were extremely successful. The business meetings were well attended and quite productive. The scientific sessions were also well attended and of high quality. I believe the MCH section stands out as one of the most active and participatory groups in all of APHA. Everyone deserves credit for this!

A piece of news for those who have not yet heard, we had another section member elected to the APHA Executive Board - Terri Wright.

Our midyear meeting is coming up in late February (2/28) and will be held at APHA headquarters. I hope many of you will attend. The primary focus of that meeting will be to address the policy issues facing MCH programs and how we, as a section, can promote discussion about issues important to us. The two strategies we will focus on will be efforts to move MCH issues into the political debate of the upcoming national elections and the planning for activities with Congress for the upcoming national APHA meeting in Washington, D.C. in the fall. Please come to the meeting with ideas, potential partners, and concrete activities for discussion. Among other things, we will plan a visit for section members to the Hill for the fall meeting.

With respect to section business, we still need volunteers for the membership committee. This is a high priority for us as we need to work aggressive to recruit new members. Our section size is directly related to how large our budget is and how many governing councilors we are assigned. Both of these are crucial to maintaining high visibility in APHA and beyond.

I also would like ideas for this fall's Martha May Eliot Forum. At the last meeting we had an excellent session on youth violence prevention which highlighted some model programs in the San Francisco area. I would like to develop this year's forum around programs in the Washington, D.C. area, highlighting current priority areas in MCH such as obesity. All thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

I wish all of you a Happy New Year and strength and vision for the important changes needed to promote good MCH policy in the future.