The Action Board has been involved in assisting and promoting the policies of APHA in several areas.  One area, policy archiving, is one in which I am directlyi nvolved.  The concept is for concerned APHA members with expertise (or experience/ knowledge) of selected policies to review them for relevancy, and timeliness/ scientific accuracy. This is being done in order to help update useful policies, eliminate dated ones and merge others.  The surface has just been scratched, and there is much more work to be done, but the process has been started.

Much of the work of the Action Board has been focused around advocacy related to Congressional action with regard to promoting or cutting funding for public health programs.  There has been encouragement from the AB with the help of Governmental Affairs of APHA to suggest visiting of members of Congress to express our concerns about budget cuts that affected us and to proactively encourage support for the bill sponsored by Senator Obama of Illinois and Representative Solis of California with the Health PLACES legislation.  The reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act is critical, for example to many programs we are involved in.  There is another legislative recess in July which could provide another opportunity to communicate our concerns.

This gives you some idea of Action Board activities.  I plan to provide more detailed information in the September newsletter.  Until then, feel free to contact me at scpiller@mindspring.com.