Felix Aguilar, Jennifer Bretsch (Staff), Michael Compton, Rebecca Ferrini, Jim Guillory, David Katz (Chair), Perrianne Lurie, David Meyers, Robert Shaw Rhodes, Ted Robinson, Joseph, Schwerha, Kevin Sherin, Steven Teutsch, Stephanie Zaza.

I. Welcome and Introductions

David Katz called the committee to order at 1:05 PM. He welcomed and thanked the committee members and led the introductions. He noted that the committee members were selected because of the breadth and depth of expertise with a wide range of important preventive medicine topics.

David Katz noted that the committee’s focus would be to enhance its productivity of ACPM policy reviews and position statements. In support of that effort, the College is working to streamline the review process of draft papers. One improvement will be the Prevention Practice Committee recommending policies directly to ACPM’s Board of Regents for their formal approval and vote. The Chair and Vice Chair of the Policy Committee will be aware of all stages during the development of policy papers and will assist with determining the College’s position for ACPM position papers. Also, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine will not subject ACPM position papers to an external peer review process, as these papers represent the opinion of the College. Finally, the committee will rely on a new peer review guidance document that will facilitate a more thorough and easier review of draft papers.

The process and end results should be mutually beneficial to the committee members and to the College. A benefit will be that committee members will be acknowledged for their contributions to policy reviews and position statements as members of a ‘writing group’ at the end of the published papers.

Jennifer Bretsch briefly updated the committee on the current status of policy papers in the pipeline. Several papers will soon be circulated to the committee for their review and comments. One will soon be circulated to the Board of Regents. Several others require further revisions by the authors. A practice policy, "Screening for Chlamydia Trachomatis" will be published by AJPM in the April 2003 issue.

The committee discussed several new topics for future papers. Staff will compile all the suggestions and circulate a list to the committee for review. At an upcoming meeting, the committee will prioritize the list of topics. One goal of future papers is to aim for gaps in the literature and the PPC list will be compared with USPSTF topics that will be addressed in the near term.

Jennifer Bretsch noted that the next opportunity to convene this committee would be at Preventive Medicine 2003 in San Diego. The meeting will take place on Thursday, February 20^th, 11:30 to 1:30 p.m.

Jennifer also noted an email listserv would be established for committee communications.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:02 PM.