This is the last
newsletter before APHA convenes its 136th Annual Meeting in San
Diego! In the pages to follow you’ll
receive a link that will take you to the Medical Care Section sessions at the
Meeting along with information about events that Medical Care is sponsoring. We solicit your involvement in reviewing proposed
policies and in identifying policy gaps and/or needed policy updates. We invite you to come ‘sit a spell’ (my rural
roots are showing) at our newly refurbished exhibit booth where you’ll get a
button branding you as a Medical Care Section member that promotes Health for
All! We’ll urge you yet again to recruit
friends and colleagues to join the section as a primary or secondary member. There is a lot to read including an article
by Dr. Wayne Myers, Chair of the Section Rural Committee and incoming Governing
Councilor who visited Iraq; a Request for Application from the American Cancer
Society, and an announcement regarding a search for a new dean in the School of
Public Health in South Carolina.
This is a big year for the
section. The Medical Care Section was
formally recognized in 1948, 60 years ago, however, our commitment to and
advocacy for health for all goes back
to before we received that formal recognition.
Celebrating our birthday is certainly in order but we wish to do much more
than that. As a country we are today at
a point of crisis or opportunity. I
choose to think in terms of the latter.
2009 will start a new chapter, one that is informed by what we have
learned throughout our history as a section and our history as a country; a
year in which we can begin again to build a system of healthcare that is
affordable, that is of high quality, that provides the same quality of care to
anyone on our shores regardless of their ability to pay, a system that is
culturally sensitive and culturally competent, that seeks to prevent illness
and disease not just through medical practice but through addressing the other
determinants of health and well-being.
In 2009 we will have a new
administration, a new Congress, and a new opportunity to educate these new leaders. At this year’s Annual Meeting we need to
prepare. We need to prepare for best
case and worst case scenarios for 2009. We
need to be ready, we need to be stoked.
I hope you will come to
this year’s Meeting, and to this year’s Section meetings, with the goal of
reconnecting with your passion as well as with your friends and colleagues. Come with a goal of renewing your sense of
optimism about what can be. I look
forward to meeting those of you I don’t know, and to seeing all of you in San
Diego. At this year’s “Evening with” let
us make a toast (there will be a cash bar) to all that we have accomplished in
the last 60 years and to all that we will accomplish in the years to come. See
you in San Diego!
Safe travels.
Gail
Gail Bellamy, Medical Care Section Chair
P.S. Bring a
friend!