137th Annual APHA Meeting, New PBRN Sites, Public Health Law & PHSSR Conference
Filed under: APHA, Accreditation, Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness & Emergency Response, Finance, HSR Special Issue, Health Services Research (HSR), Keeneland Conference, PBRN, PHSSR Grants, Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), Public Health Workforce, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Workforce
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
Well, time to put up a post-APHA blog entry. During the recent meeting in Philadelphia, the PHSSR team was very busy. The team members were responsible for several oral and poster presentations. We are posting all of the available presentations on the website, so that if you didn’t make it to the session you can download a copy for review. All three areas of PHSSR: The Center, Practice Based Research Networks and Public Health Finance were well represented at the 137th Annual APHA Meeting. Dr. Peggy Honoré presented on the use of financial ratios to help with public health department finance, which resulted in a spike in the number of download requests for the Ratio Analysis Spreadsheet and related materials. Interest in public health finance is growing thanks to Dr. Honoré’s tireless efforts.
Professor Scott Burris
Professor Scott Burris, who runs the National Program Office of the RWJF Public Health Law Research (PHLR), took time out of his busy schedule to meet with us. Our meeting was very productive and as a result, he and his staff are planning to attend the 2010 PHSSR Keeneland Conference. The conference would be a great place for some of the PHLR grantees to meet one another and also hold a scientific session to discuss the invaluable role public health law plays in PHSSR. We talked about public health infrastructure law and touched on the possibility of writing a joint manuscript on the issue. Professor Burris was a fine choice to head up the PHLR National Program Office. His thoughts about PHLR and the recent APHA sessions are available as a podcast via RWJF’s website.
Drs. Jim Marks, Michelle Larkin and Debra Pérez from RWJF hosted a reception on for the people involved in their public health team. Close to 100 people attended the three-hour reception. I was able to touch base with so many of my public health colleagues and distribute several copies of the special PHSSR issue of the HSR Journal. Dr. Kyu Rhee, the Chief of Public Health at Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), was there and we had a great conversation covering several important issues such as public health workforce enumeration. At the present time, Dr. Rhee is scheduled to be one of the keynote speakers at the 2010 PHSSR Keeneland Conference in April.
The PHSSR team also set up a booth in the exhibit hall during the course of the show. Researchers interested in funding opportunities, practitioners interested in the new PBRN sites and a select group of policymakers interested in the special issue of the HSR journal dedicated to PHSSR visited the exhibit booth. As mentioned above, our Call for Proposals is now open until January 14, 2010. Interested applicants should click the link above and apply online. If you are junior faculty or need support for your dissertation, we encourage you to apply. 
Scutch with Drs. Paul Erwin, Danielle Varda, Dorothy Cilenti and William Mase (L-R)
The Center for PHSSR held a session at APHA moderated by Dr. Bud Nicola to shine a spotlight on the work being done by four of our mini-grantees, Paul C. Erwin, Danielle Varda, Dorothy Cilenti and William Mase, and one of our doctoral research assistants, Tourette Jackson. Full presentations and abstracts are available on our website via our Events tab or by clicking here.
Several of Dr. Glen Mays’ presentations made news, which included the late-breaking session oral presentation that accredited health departments did a good job of H1N1 management. His podcast from APHA is also available online. The Kentucky PBRN, KPHReN, team members Dr. Dearinger, Sarah Wilding and Alex Howard gave a presentation on the lack of communication between health departments, pharmacies and primary care physicians during the early 2009 H1N1 outbreak. Dr. Mays also announced the seven new PBRNs:
· Ohio PBRN – Matthew Stefanak of Mahoning County Department of Health and Scott Frank of Case Western Reserve University will serve as co-principal investigators.
· Florida PBRN – Bill Livingood and Nancy Winterbauer of the Duval County Health Department will serve as co-principal investigators.
· Minnesota PBRN – Debra Burns and Kimberly Gearin of the Minnesota Department of Health will serve as co-principal investigators.
· Nebraska PBRN – David Palm of the Nebraska Division of Public Health and Li Wu Chen of the University of Nebraska Medical Center will serve as co-principal investigators.
· Connecticut PBRN – Jennifer Kertanis of the Connecticut Association of Directors of Health and Elaine O’Keefe of Yale University will serve as co-principal investigators.
· New York PBRN – Sylvia Pirani of the New York Department of Health and Sandra McGinnis of the University of Albany will serve as co-principal investigators.
I stayed on through the remainder of the week to attend the PHAB Board Annual Dinner and Board meeting. Congrats to Dr. Judy Monroe who was elected Chair-Elect of the Board. She will replace Dr. Bill Riley who served during the interim after Dr. Paul Halverson stepped down as Board Chair. We are all quite pleased that the beta test of the PHAB standards and process is off and running. We look forward to hosting the PHAB Research and Evaluation Committee and the Executive Committee during the Keeneland Conference and have blocked time for a scientific session dedicated to accreditation. Dr. Kaye Bender has done a spectacular job keeping PHAB moving forward. Kudos also to members of the Board for chairing key committees, such as Dr. Bud Nicola with the Beta Test Committee and Dr. Judy Monroe with the Finance Committee.
Save-The-Date, Today!!! The 2010 PHSSR Keeneland Conference is approaching quickly. Planning has begun and rooms can be reserved online now. Registration will open in early January, but the Call for Abstracts has been extended until Thursday, January 7th, 2010. We anticipate a crowd of over 300 this year. Not only are the scientific sessions tentatively penciled in for Wednesday, but also the ancillary meetings scheduled for Tuesday morning, include our colleagues in the preparedness centers, our public health workforce advisory committee and the PBRN advisory committee. Don’t forget to put it on your calendars today and make plans to attend.
Scutch
2009 PHSSR Keeneland Conference A Success!
Filed under: Accreditation, Keeneland Conference, PBRN, PHAB, Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), Public Health Textbooks, Public Health Workforce, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), University of Arkansas for Medical Science, Workforce
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
Well, another Keeneland Conference has come and gone. We will be posting an online survey on the website so we can get feedback from you, so please take a moment to share your thoughts. The UK Center for Public Health Systems & Services Research team will be taking a well-deserved breather to catch up with work and update the website with conference highlights, materials and presentations. Downloads of the materials are available at www.keenelandconference.org or by clicking the green USB drive at the right, make sure you check it out!
Michelle Larkin, J.D., the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Public Health Team Leader was a hit; her talk was inspirational and is posted on both the RWJF and PHSSR websites. She certainly challenged those of us in public health to take advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity. With the new political administration and leadership, we have an open window to move in several areas and get our work in front of the public eye. I believe she once again reiterated the support and encouragement that RWJF is providing. Even with the corpus of their endowment in same place as my 401(k), they stand by their commitment to making an investment in public health. They still believe, fervently, that this commitment will make a difference in the health status of our nation. The Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) is a classic example of that continued commitment and a stake in the ground in our effort to improve public health. It is up to those of us in vineyards to provide the brains needed to power this effort.
Debra Perez, Ph.D., Senior Project Officer at RWJF and our visionary leader in PHSSR did a wonderful job at the lunch plenary tracing the past, present and future of the field. Her chronology of how we got here, why and where we are going was a tour-de-force of the PHSSR trail. She spoke of RWJF’s continuing commitment to PHSSR and announced that the National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) will lead the new round of funding proposals in PHSSR. NNPHI will issue a Call for Proposals in the early part of Summer 2009, so put on your thinking cap! She finished with a challenge by quoting a line from the textbook Dr. Bill Keck and I wrote, Principles of Public Health Practice, regarding the future of public health and PHSSR. That was spontaneous; we didn’t pay her for the commercial, but do appreciate it.
Plenary presentations by Carolyn Clancy, M.D., and Steve Schoenbaum, M.D., were very well received and prompted a lot of discussion throughout the conference, especially during Thursday morning’s roundtable session about how PHSSR can relate to the notions both of the stimulus funding and the new efforts at health systems reform.
Many stated that they thought the scientific presentations this year were excellent. Most know that Glen Mays, Ph.D., has suggested that we are beginning to move from observational studies to more inferential work. I think that was more in evidence this year, reflecting a maturity of the discipline. I believe both the mini-grantees’ presentations and contributed papers reflect that development.
Another delightful development is the broadening of the circle surrounding PHSSR to include other public health entities interested in collaborating with our team. Our colleagues at the preparedness centers have recognized the importance of PHSSR to their efforts to enhance our preparedness activities. The practice based research networks and their advisory committee were very involved in the meeting this year, bringing the academic/practice partnership to the meeting in a major way. The meetings of both the Data Harmonization Work Group and the Advisory Panel to our Center of Excellence in Public Health Workforce Research and Policy were incredibly productive. We will be posting some of the results of our efforts on the website, so join the PHSSR community to make sure you receive the email updates.
Well, the ponies ran true to form. The big winners, I believe, belonged to Michael Caldwell’s family. Michael traveled with his family to Kentucky for their spring vacation. In addition to catching a Cincinnati Reds baseball game, rumor has it that his daughter’s picks at Keeneland were among the best going. I broke even, which is a good day for me. We had sunny skies, temperatures in the mid-60’s and our seats were on the finish line. I noticed that there were several folks who enjoyed Keeneland’s prize bread pudding which is soaked in a special Maker’s Mark Bourbon Sauce.
We are already planning next year’s Keeneland Conference. We and our colleagues at RWJF will both be debriefing this next week or so and will be getting the word out about next year. I suspect it will be bigger and better! We had nearly 300 people this year, double the number in attendance in 2008, and look forward to 2010 to being even better!