Chair: Mark Johnson                                                                            Staff: Mike Barry

Vice Chair: Chris Armstrong

Since its report to the Board in February 2002, the ACPM Policy Committee has focused on: (1) preparing and distributing a preventive medicine residency funding advocacy brochure, (2) preparing for and convening an ACPM Preventive Medicine Hill Leadership Day, (3) preparing for and participating in the annual AMA House of Delegates meeting, (4) finalizing the 2002 annual objectives for the committee, (5) moving the Job Market Initiative forward, (6) implementing ACPM’s on-line policy compendium, and (7) codifying and planning to implement resolutions adopted by the ACPM Board in February 2002.

ACPM completed the development and printing of its advocacy brochure, A Public Health Crisis: The Shortage of Physicians Trained in Preventive Medicine. The brochure highlights the growing importance of and demand for preventive medicine physicians in today’s health environment while drawing attention to the decreasing supply of preventive medicine specialists and erosion of funds for training programs. ACPM shared the brochure with numerous congressional staff (see below) and distributed 100 copies to the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine for further distribution. ACPM is planning to distribute the brochure to all congressional offices this summer. The brochure can be downloaded at the ACPM home page (www.acpm.org).

ACPM organized and executed a Preventive Medicine Hill Leadership Day on May 16, 2002. The Hill Day was ACPM’s largest advocacy event of the year, as leaders from the College and ACPM staff met with legislative staff in nearly 20 congressional offices responsible for health appropriations. During the visits ACPM presented its new advocacy brochure (see above) and distributed a variety of other preventive medicine resource materials. The visits were aimed at increasing HRSA Title VII funding for general preventive medicine/public health training programs, which have long been neglected by Congress. ACPM representatives also stressed that any efforts to strengthen the public health infrastructure and disaster response capability must include measures to strengthen the existing training programs that produce public health leaders. ACPM has continued its contact with key congressional staffers following the Hill Day and has made additional visits to Congress to advocate for increased funding for preventive medicine residency training.

ACPM was an active participant in the AMA House of Delegates (HOD) 2002 annual meeting in Chicago. The HOD adopted two resolutions sponsored by ACPM. The first resolution calls on the AMA to educate state lawmakers on the need for uniformity in "cause of death" statistics and reaffirmed existing policy supporting the integration into undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education of instruction on the use of and proper completion of vital records. The second resolution urges AMA to push congressional appropriators to increase funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to counter the administration's FY 2003 budget proposal, which would slash AHRQ funding by $48 million. (See http://www.acpm.org/pol_ama_resolutions_pending.htm for copies of the policies submitted to the AMA.) ACPM also convened meetings of the Section Council on Preventive Medicine and advocated for a variety of other policies in support of public health and preventive medicine.

During the February 2002 meeting of the Policy Committee, ACPM staff presented a draft set of annual objectives to help prioritize and guide the work of the committee and staff. Following discussion by the committee and further review following the meeting, ACPM finalized and distributed the objectives to the committee. The objectives are as follows:

• Increase from the previous year the number of ACPM policy resolutions (non-AMA) submitted and the percentage adopted (2001 baseline: 8, 37.5%).
• Develop plans for implementing resolutions (non-AMA) passed in 2001 and at the 2002 annual meeting and report on progress to the committee/Board at the November 2002 business meetings.
• Increase FY 2003 federal appropriations/funding for general preventive medicine/public health residency training programs by at least 25 percent over the FY 2002 level (FY 2001 baseline: $1.85 million)
• Make the Job Market Initiative (JMI) web site fully functional to include 200-400 job postings suitable to preventive medicine physicians per month and provide a link through the ACPM web site.

Since February, the ACPM/AAPHP Job Market Initiative (JMI) has made significant strides in refining the Job Market Web Page (http://www.aaphp.org/jobmarket/PHP_positions_.htm) and increasing the number of job postings suitable for preventive medicine physicians. In the 30-day period ending June 15, 2002, the JMI web page listed 12 job announcements submitted directly to AAPHP/ACPM and abstracted an additional 143 ads from leading medical and public health journals. The site also added a new category of web links to which applicants can post resumes. In June, ACPM and AAPHP signed a letter of agreement that will pave the way for ACPM to link to and jointly sponsor the site and begin marketing it to its members, which likely will dramatically increase traffic to the site.

ACPM has nearly completed the task of moving its external policies on to the ACPM web site.  Nearly all policies adopted by the College in 2001 and 2002 are now available on-line at http://www.acpm.org/pol_2002toc.htm.  Policies are organized according to major topic areas based on a framework similar to the Healthy People 2010 focus areas.  ACPM is working to complete the policy archive for policies adopted in 2000.  This is a great resource for Policy Committee and other ACPM members to find ACPM’s latest policies on a given topic and to track ACPM’s legislative and advocacy activities. The next step in the process will be to develop a search engine that will allow policies to be searched and retrieved by key word.

In conjunction with the February 2002 Open Policy Forum, ACPM adopted policy resolutions regarding vaccine supply and distribution, antibiotic resistance, health insurance reform, and consultative preventive medicine. A fifth resolution regarding plans for stockpiling and distribution of potassium iodide (KI) for radiologic emergencies was deferred pending further research by the Policy Committee. (See http://www.acpm.org/pol_winter2002res.htm for action taken on each resolution.) The health insurance and consultative preventive medicine resolutions called for the creation of ACPM task forces or subcommittees of the Policy Committee to address the issue. The ACPM President, in consultation with the Policy Committee Chair, has agreed that both resolutions should be addressed through the formation of subcommittees and that the health insurance reform resolution is of higher priority. ACPM has yet establish these groups because of limited staff resources. However, ACPM, with sponsorship from Pfizer, Inc., has launched a preventive medicine health policy practicum rotation at ACPM. ACPM anticipates the first resident rotation will begin in July or August of 2002 and that the resident will have among his/her responsibilities the start-up of the health insurance reform subcommittee.