MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
Section Chair Tim Williams, John Snow Inc., 1616 N. Fort Myer Drive, 11th Floor, Arlington, VA 22209 Phone: (703) 528-7480 Fax: (703) 528-7480 E-mail: tim_williams@jsi.comDear PFPRH colleagues,
Today and in recent weeks, our thoughts are properly overwhelmed by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The images of destruction from the storm itself shocked us as no storm in memory, and every day it becomes clearer that Katrina’s consequences will be with us all for months and years to come. To the individuals and families who lost loved ones, homes, businesses, and more — our hearts, prayers, and best wishes go out to you. This unique event robbed tens of thousands of people of their community —t hat sense of familiarity with known surroundings that makes us much of who we are. Things can never be quite the same. We can at least hope that all the private and (woefully belated) public relief and restoration efforts will give people new hope for new beginnings.
Clearly, we all want to help Katrina victims in a way that “matters.” Since there has been so much relief coverage lately, we are all well aware of worthy charities, and I applaud all who have contributed already. Nevertheless, past history shows that while American generosity for disaster relief is immense, and her response swift, her memory can be short. After initial good deeds, minds can quickly turn to other things. I don’t think the memory of Katrina will fade any time soon, but I do think it’s worth keeping up support and donations after others feel they’ve done their share. So here is a message from APHA that may help those of you still searching for a way to give. I hope it is still reasonably up to date and helpful:
In the immediate future, the best thing that people can do to help is to provide support to the agencies and organizations that are involved in the relief efforts, and the best (and quickest) way to make a contribution, is to send money to these organizations so that they can continue their work to aide the people who are affected by the hurricane. Information about the organizations is available on the APHA Web site at:
<
http://www.apha.org/meetings/new_orleans_update.htm>.
It also occurs to me that Katrina may understandably turn people’s thoughts away from other forgotten poor and forgotten, smaller “disasters” and chronic conditions that are the focus of much of public health work, including that of our Section. The noble support flowing to Katrina victims and future disaster planning, while absolutely vital, may nevertheless gradually divert scarce charitable dollars from longer-term preventive public health programs. This is true of both private donations and government support for family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) — and indeed all discretionary spending. Even this president, who has never seen a deficit he didn’t want to increase, has finally said that government spending will be cut, and I think we all know where the cuts
won’t come from!
Such a possible turn of events would be highly ironic, as it was precisely the
lack of investment in preventive infrastructure such as levee reinforcement, in the face of strong evidence of the benefits, which made the end-result of Katrina so much worse than it could have been. How sad if one of the legacies of Katrina is that the attempt to invest in one form of prevention (fortifying large numbers of cities against future natural and manmade disasters) occurs at the expense of less visible but highly successful programs such as FP/RH, that in very different ways provide crucial preventive health benefits to needy individuals, families, and communities. I believe we must make an especially strong case at this juncture to raise the importance of our work in the eyes of policy makers everywhere, and as always focus energies on continuous program improvement, so we can make stronger arguments for support based on solid evidence of success.
And speaking of evidence, APHA will indeed go on, and the theme this year is
Evidence-Based Policy and Practice. As I said in my
Message from the Chair last Spring, this topic couldn’t come at a better time. Political decisions related to FP/RH continue to be made on the basis of what I call “anti-evidence.”
Ideology continues to trump science, just at a time when we need science and sound evidence to deal with ever more complex challenges in our FP/RH and other public health work. Such ideological decisions continue to chip away at women’s and couples’ access to quality RH services, leading to outcomes that, while mostly private and far less visible than catastrophes such as Katrina, are tragic nonetheless, and almost always preventable.
So please join me and hundreds of others in APHA this year.
Now is our chance to present positive evidence of what it takes to design, test, implement, manage, evaluate, and scale up FP/RH programs, our achievements and lessons learned, successes and failures, and the messages we can bring to policy-makers to encourage sound, evidence-based decisions. Young Mi Kim has put together a terrific program, with sessions that appear packed with high quality and innovative presentations. As always, the main challenge is likely to be deciding what sessions to skip. Thank you, Young Mi!
Unfortunately, as you all know by now, New Orleans will not be able to host the conference, but APHA has been able to reschedule for Dec. 10-14 (the normal Saturday – Wednesday schedule). Three years ago Philadelphia proved to be a wonderful conference site, so although it will be cooler than New Orleans, it promises to be a highly rewarding and enjoyable event as always.
Let me close with a plea to all of you, especially to relatively new members, to
become active in APHA advocacy and leadership. Our Section has the opportunity to influence APHA policy — and eventually broader national policies — by bringing our issues to APHA leaders. Please see the report by Lois Uttley, our Section’s representative to the Action Board, on FP/RH issues that she and the Board have been or are currently working on. Many thanks to Lois for her continued work and dedication on these issues!
Another way to become involved with policy and leadership issues is to
join a Task Force in an area of interest to you. Most Task Forces will meet during the conference on Sunday, Dec. 11, but check the online program to find the time of the group or groups that most interest you. Task Force leaders love new faces and new ideas, and it’s a great way to learn more about APHA, specific technical areas, and to contribute new ideas to current leaders. See the Fask Force reports in this newsletter for more information. Task force chairs and other current officers are also listed on our Section Web site, <
http://pfprh.org/>, which also has useful information on policies, fact sheets, standing committees, awards, etc.
Wishing you all a great fall, and see you soon in Philadelphia!
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NOMINATIONS COMMITTEE
Chair Tim Williams, John Snow Inc., 1616 N. Fort Myer Drive, 11th Floor, Arlington, VA 22209 Phone: (703) 528-7480 Fax: (703) 528-7480 E-mail: tim_williams@jsi.com One nice feature of APHA each year is the chance to welcome a new group of Section leaders. Web-based elections for new officers were held in May, with multiple candidates for all positions. It is a great pleasure for me to announce the winners for the following positions:
Chair:
Margaret E. Green, PhD, MA
Secretary:
Lawrence B. Finer, PhD
Governing Council:
Lindsay Stewart, MPH
Section Council:
John Santelli, MD. MPH, and
Hannah Searing, MHS, MA
I heartily welcome this new group of PFPRH Section leaders and look forward to working with you and current Section officers to help us advance our Section’s work. I also especially want to thank all those who ran but did not win — it was an exceptionally strong slate, and all the candidates were highly capable. Even if you did not win this time, please consider running again at some point in the future.
Thanks and congratulations to all!
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MEMBERSHIP REPORT
Chair, Erica Fishman, Asthma Program Coordinator, Minnesota Department of Health, P.O. Box 9441, Minneapolis, MN 55440-9441 Phone: 612-676-5213 E-mail: erica.fishman@health.state.mn.us Our membership has remained relatively stable at 2.8 percent of total APHA membership. Over the years we have kept a steady core of members, and each month we gain new members (but never more than 10). As of June 30, 2005, our Section has 740 individuals for whom this is their primary Section. Once again, this number is lower than last year.
Please tell your colleagues of all the great benefits of being a member of our Section, including an informative newsletter. For those people who attend the APHA Annual Meeting, our Section is an invaluable resource for information regarding population, family planning and reproductive health-related sessions. It also provides an opportunity to meet informally with people who do similar work domestically and internationally. For more information, please contact Erica Fishman at <
Erica.fishman@health.state.mn.us>.
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ACTION BOARD REPORT
Board Representative Lois Uttley, Education Fund of Family Planning Advocates of NYS, 17 Elk Street, Albany, NY 12207 Phone: (518) 436-8408 Fax: (518) 436-1048 E-mail: Lois@mergerwatch.org APHA has been taking action on a number of issues of particular concern to our Section, including the following:
1) Protecting Medicaid, a significant source of reproductive health care coverage for low-income women. APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin has made this a top priority for advocacy. APHA members are being urged to contact their members of Congress and set up meetings in the members' district offices during Congressional recesses. Visit APHA's Medicaid Advocacy Center for helpful background information, fact sheets and talking points: <
http://www.apha.org/legislative/legislative/medicaid.htm>.
On August 25, APHA released a "white paper" identifying four priorities Congress should protect when considering changes to Medicaid. The full text of the white paper, authored by APHA Health Policy Analyst Courtney Perlino, is available on APHA's Web site, <
http://www.apha.org/medicaidwhitepaper/medicaidwhitepaper_full.pdf >.
2) Addressing the problem of pharmacists refusing to dispense contraceptives, including emergency contraception. Members of our Section are working with APHA staff, pharmacists, and leadership of the Action Board to develop and submit a proposed "late-breaker" resolution on pharmacist refusals for consideration by the Governing Council at December's Annual Meeting. Our policy objective is to ensure that women are able to fill their contraceptive prescriptions at local pharmacies without interference or moralizing from objecting pharmacists.
The resolution, if adopted, would become the basis on which APHA staff, sections and affiliates could take action to support or oppose any proposed laws or regulations dealing with this issue. To learn more or become involved in this effort, contact our Section's representative to the Action Board, Lois Uttley, at <
lois@mergerwatch.org>.
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FROM THE HILL
Terri Bartlett, Vice President, Public Policy and Craig Lasher, Senior Policy Analyst, Population Action International, 1120 19th Street, NW, Suite 550, Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 659-1833 E-mail: tlb@popact.org (Terri) and clasher@popact.org (Craig)As Congress returns to Washington in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it faces a dramatically changed fiscal and political environment with significant implications for the congressional work schedule. Together with looming Senate confirmation fights for now two Supreme Court vacancies, predictions are being made that Congress may be in session until Thanksgiving. A number of contentious international family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) issues are yet to be resolved. But with Congress and the White House consumed with relief and recovery efforts for the Gulf Coast states, international family planning, along with virtually every other legislative and policy concern unrelated to the disaster, is not garnering —and will not garner — much attention or priority in the near term.
In comparison with other recent years, Congress had actually made considerable progress on must-pass appropriations bills, including House and Senate passage of their respective versions of the foreign operations bills, which include FP/RH funding and policy language, prior to its August recess.
Preliminary staff-level discussions have taken place already in preparation for convening the formal conference committee of Senators and Representatives, who will negotiate remaining controversies likely to include some of the FP/RH provisions. Completing negotiations on a final bill will be complicated not only by the Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the Senate, but also by process issues resulting from changes in Appropriations Subcommittee jurisdictions; these changes added responsibility for funding State Department operations to the foreign operations bill in the Senate. A series of “continuing resolutions” — stop-gap funding bills to keep the federal government running until appropriations bills are enacted after the start of the new fiscal year — are expected to be necessary before Congress can complete its work and adjourn.
In addition to the appropriations process, the other outstanding questions in Washington concern whether the decision of the Bush administration to expand the requirement that recipients of U.S. government HIV/AIDS assistance have an official organizational policy opposing prostitution and sex trafficking will survive a legal challenge by DKT International, and when the State Department will finally announce its inevitable decision to withhold the FY 2005 contribution to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Since the last Section newsletter, a number of important legislative and policy developments — many related to those previewed above — have occurred in Washington. A detailed summary follows below.
FY 2006 APPROPRIATIONS BILLThe House debated and passed the foreign operations bill (H.R. 3057) on June 28, and Senate floor passage occurred on July 20. As usual, the draft Senate bill treats FP/RH programs more favorably by including a higher overall earmark for bilateral population funding ($450 million in the Senate bill versus $432 million in the House), modifying the Kemp-Kasten amendment to make it more difficult for the Bush administration to withhold a U.S. contribution to UNFPA, and calling for the repeal of the Mexico City-Global Gag Rule policy (
http://www.globalgagrule.org).
Among other differences between the two bills: a Senate provision that exempts contraceptives and condoms from legislative and policy restrictions, such as the Mexico City-Global Gag Rule, that block access to U.S.-donated reproductive health supplies; House report language requesting an update on "informed consent problems" in Peru; and Senate bill and report language on child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), respectively.
The only FP/RH-related provision that was added by the Senate, other than the UNFPA amendment discussed below, is a floor amendment directing the Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit of the use of FY 2004 and 2005 funds within the Child Survival and Health Programs Fund, under with FP/RH programs are largely funded, and make "specific recommendations on improving the effectiveness of such funds."
For the full text of the House-approved bill, go to: <
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/
getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:h3057eh.txt.pdf>.
For the full text of the Senate-approved bill go to: <
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/
getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:h3057eas.txt.pdf>.
Despite the fact that the estimated cost of hurricane reconstruction is projected by many observers to eventually top $100 billion, these expenses are expected to be designated as “emergency” funds and will not require that corresponding cuts be made in the regular FY 2006 appropriations bills. However, there is rising concern about the potential effect of disaster relief on the economy and the budget deficit, which may lead to increasing congressional and public scrutiny of foreign assistance spending in light of domestic needs.
Given the controversies surrounding FP/RH issues — as well as numerous extraneous political, procedural, and schedule obstacles — advocates are doubtful that many positive FP/RH provisions will make their way into the final appropriations bill that will be approved by Congress and sent to the