I am delighted to announce that the proposed bylaws change regarding AUPHA Board composition passed. The poll opened on 14 August and closed on 13 September, 2019, with 73 (59%) of the eligible programs voting. Of those who voted, 69 (93%) supported the change.
The Board had recommended that the bylaws be changed to read:
Board Composition. The specified number of Board members allowed from the various categories of membership:
- Full Member Programs No less than 10 (Accredited Graduate and Certified Undergraduate)
- Associate Member Programs No more than 1
- Affiliate Member Programs (Practitioners) No more than 3
- Individual Members No more than 1
- International Members No more than 1
- President/CEO No more than 1
See Article IX –Board of Directors, Section 5. Representation
Board Leadership. Only Full Program Members shall be eligible to serve as officers for the Association. The officers include Chair, Immediate Past Chair, Chair Elect, Treasurer and Secretary
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During his term as chair, Mark Diana wrote a blog about the bylaws change proposal (21 March 2019). He noted that the Board had been seriously addressing the issue of inclusion at AUPHA, specifically regarding that AUPHA Board membership did not adequately represent its overall membership.
At the AUPHA Annual Meeting business meeting in New Orleans, we experienced a healthy exchange of ideas and discussion on representation, membership value, and participation by high quality programs on the board. I offer a sincere thank you to those who participated in the discussion and to the programs who took the time to vote. We work better when we work together, share ideas, and challenge/support one another as a team.
Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD, the 2019 William B. Graham Prize recipient for health services research, spoke to this theme during his acceptance talk at our Annual Meeting in New Orleans:
To be effective, our work in implementation science needed . . . diverse people, ideas, and disciplines. Our work uses transdisciplinary research in which researchers and practitioners from different disciplines work on a common problem using an integrated conceptual framework that seeks to align multiple levers to realize a much greater risk reduction. As such, we collaborated with scholars from every division of a university - medicine, nursing, public health, engineering, computer science, social sciences, and with public and private sector leaders to realize results. The work upon which this award was based was made possible through a web of ideas, people, and organizations.
Effective interprofessional collaboration depends upon this web, particularly the web of people who are training future effective healthcare clinicians and administrators. These diverse professionals will be working together on teams to improve the patient experience, patient engagement, and patient health. To help them be better prepared, we should reflect seriously on our programs’ involvement with interprofessional education.
Laurie Shanderson serves as the chair for AUPHA’s Interprofessional Education Faculty Forum. If so inclined, join the forum, ask questions, and post descriptions about effective assignments and activities from your campus. Consider submitting an article to the Journal of Health Administration Education on your health administration programs’ experience with interprofessional education.
And we should do this because, to paraphrase Pronovost’s words, our work needs diverse people, ideas, and disciplines.
If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I look forward to seeing you at the Undergraduate Workshop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in October.
Best,
Leigh