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By Daniel Gentry, PhD, MHA posted 02-15-2023 09:28

  

Greetings AUPHA Colleagues:

Welcome to 2023 and the 75th Anniversary of AUPHA! Please join the AUPHA Board, leadership, and staff in celebrating 75 years of excellence in healthcare management and leadership and health policy education. 

We will be recognizing this very special anniversary all year long, and especially at our Academic Program & Practitioner Workshop at the ACHE Congress in Chicago in March, our AUPHA Annual Meeting in National Harbor, MD (DC) in June/July, the NALHE Leadership Summit in Seattle in September, and the NAHSE Annual Education Conference and Case Competition in Atlanta in October. 

Rather than mostly looking back, which was emphasized for AUPHA’s 70th Anniversary and the AUPHA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in 2018, we are focusing on AUPHA’s current renaissance and our bold and exciting future. And with prioritized initiatives that have more intention than ever before. 

How are we being more intentional? If you’re like me, as a teacher and academic leader, AUPHA has always been my go-to place for ways to improve my teaching and mentoring, my educational scholarship, and to develop as an academic leader with regard to my prior service as an academic program director, department chair/division director, and academic dean. In the past, however, it’s been up to members to navigate AUPHA’s offerings, which have been primarily focused on our two main face-to-face (F2F) meetings each year and the AUPHA Network (online Faculty Forums, discussion groups, and other affinity communities). 

That’s all changing, and in very big ways! As part of the AUPHA 2020-2024 Strategic Plan, we will offer several AUPHA’s new Art of Teaching Institute (ATI) courses just prior to ACHE Congress, on Sunday, March 19. And all seven courses for the ATI will have been offered by early July, either F2F or remotely. And, by the beginning of 2024, the AUPHA Leadership Academy (LA) will also be launched. The LA will also offer seven initial courses, with an emphasis on both general leadership, interpersonal, team, and communication skills; and on the specific leadership roles most common among our AUPHA members - program directors, division directors/department chairs, and practitioners/executives in residence. 

This is how intention, aligned with a laser focus on mission and vision, looks! Like the AUPHA Board, I am a huge proponent of a thoughtfully crafted and expertly implemented comprehensive strategic plan. I am grateful for those who currently serve and have served on the AUPHA Board during the current strategic plan’s development and implementation, 2018-present; the 140 AUPHA member volunteers who did some of the heaviest lifting during initial implementation of the plan; and our phenomenal AUPHA staff for their teamwork with the Board and members, me and Jaime Stephens, and with each other. 

As AUPHA has experienced our fastest growth in new program members over the shortest period of time ever these past three years, including increased interest and AUPHA membership globally, we have an even greater responsibility and imperative to be the voice of academic healthcare management. AUPHA is the academy, all of it, not just part of it. We are the big tent: undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs in healthcare management and leadership, health services, and health policy; programs accredited and certified by more than a half dozen recognized specialized accreditors; programs in North America and around the world; and faculty from the many disciplines that make up our interdisciplinary field of healthcare management and leadership and health policy. We are stronger because of our academic diversity and richer because of our AUPHA members’ combined education and training, experience, and wisdom. I can’t say often enough that all of you, our members, are the “AUPHA brain trust.” 

I have never been more excited about the future of the academy, or more confident about AUPHA’s ability to lead our field boldly into the future. I hope all of you will join me, the Board, and our staff in celebrating AUPHA’s 75th Anniversary, embracing AUPHA’s exciting newest initiatives, and putting all our hope for AUPHA and the academy in the future! 

Warmly,
Dan

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