Communications Director's Message
December 2011 Newsletter Article
Happy Holidays! In the current issue of APA
Focus you'll hear from Benard and others about our recent APA Strategic
Planning Retreat. The purpose of the retreat was to create a plan for the
APA for 2012-2017. We focused on the following areas: Career &
Professional Development, Member Service & Growth,Organizational
Structure, Policy and Advocacy, & Health Care Delivery. Retreat work
groups, composed of former and current board members, research network
leaders, SIG chairs and leaders from our partner organizations, developed
goals and objectives for each of the four focus areas. The groups
discussed a variety of strategies for disseminating our work and the
value of APA membership to like-minded colleagues and institutional
leaders. Last spring, Sara Slovin (APA Fellows SIG Co-Chair) developed an
excellent one-page brochure for fellows about the APA. With input from
board members, Chris Stille has revised the brochure and it's now ready
for prime time! Please feel free to share this terrific document with
your friends, colleagues, academic partners and institutional leaders.
Based on many of your suggestions and a few new ideas generated during
the Strategic Planning Retreat, the APA will be exploring methods for
asynchronous electronic communication (i.e., wiki's and discussion
boards). We would love to hear your thoughts about how the APA can best
support your SIGs, Regions and members in general. I will be setting up a
conference call for members interested in participating on the new APA
Communications Committee in the near future. Please let me know if you
would like to join the committee!
HHTYAY (Happy Holidays to You and
Yours)
Barry Solomon
Communications Director
Academic Pediatric Association
bsolomon@jhmi.edu




