Dear Colleagues:

Happy 2008!  I am choosing to take up the mantra of the presidential race and write to you about change.  Change is one of those words that fills us concurrently with hope and with trepidation, as well it should.  As a country, many (if not all) of us are working diligently, some praying, and paying (up to the federally allowed maximum) for a change in leadership that will bring us back from the brink of insanity and move us toward a positive future.  But politics is not my purpose in writing to you today. 

I’ve heard from some Section members that the Section is in a rut; that if we want old members to re-engage and if we want new members to join, we need to relook at what we do and how we do it.  We need to reexamine the face we show to the world.  In other words, we need to change.

As a Section, we are experiencing a change of leadership, from Gordy’s capable hands to mine – whether this is a good thing is yet to be determined.  For years now, we have been working to reverse the downward trend in our membership to no avail.  Gordy is the most recent chair who along with Jim Wohlleb, our membership chair, has struggled to learn the reasons why our members stay or leave.  To that end, we fielded a zoomerang survey and asked you what you liked, and what you wanted.  Over this next year, we will be using that information to make changes in what we communicate, to whom we communicate, how we communicate, and the frequency of communications.    

We plan to revisit our interest group committees, to learn how they came to be formed, whether each of them still serves a purpose for its members, and whether there are new areas of interest to our members and not-yet-members that are not represented.  The interest group committees have, historically, made this Section a vibrant and alive place for people with varied interests to come together, to learn from one another, and to advocate in support of affordable, safe, quality health care, and on behalf of disenfranchised populations and people here and everywhere.

With respect to advocacy, we want and need to more broadly engage and re-energize you, our current members, to help us identify and fill gaps in policy that preclude APHA from participating in important national and international discussions. 

We need to do a better job of reaching out to other Sections, SPIGs, Caucuses, and now Forums to not only assess their interest and support of policies Medical Care develops but also to provide our input on policies they are developing.  One goal of this “hands-across-the-water” is to increase our success in getting policies passed through the Association AND, as importantly, to secure allies within the Association to help us get these policies on the Legislative Agenda for action.  A related goal is to advocate within APHA for a more active role for members in advocacy.  Specifically, we do not want a small legislative staff to continue to limit APHA's ability to advocate for issues, programs and funding that are supported by its membership.  We do not want a small legislative staff to limit our ability to lead and to be proactive in support of changes that improve the public’s health.  We as members should be empowered to speak and to act in a way that supports the Association’s positions.  This is a partnership; we are APHA. 

We want to invite all of you to participate in the revitalization of Medical Care.   Participate how you can and when you can.  We need members who are willing serve as the next generation of Section leadership.  We need members who are willing to serve on APHA committees and task forces as a representative of the Medical Care Section.  We need members who are content experts on issues and policies to speak on solicited panels, to review old policies to assess their continued relevance and importance to the Association, and to review abstracts for the conference.  Hopefully, someday soon, we will need content experts to testify before Congress.   

We will be looking at new features for the newsletter and for our Web site to introduce you to other Section members, to learn what members are doing and what some of you are reading that you’d like to share.  

This is a time of change, and change does represent both a point of crisis and opportunity.  Change today might be returning to what has worked in the past, or it might be doing something we’ve never done before.  Neither option will be easy, but it must be done.  I don’t believe the Section has outlived its usefulness. In fact, I know that it hasn’t.  I don’t believe that the diversity of our membership is a weakness; I firmly believe it is our strength.  What do you believe?

I start out on my first year as chair with Gordy Schiff on my left and Mona Sarfaty on my other left.J  I could not be in a better position, unless I had each of you taking an interest in what we are or are not doing, and how you can help make that happen.  How about it?

To be continued.