Melody S. Goodman, PhD, is a grantee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) New Connections program (2007), and an assistant professor at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine. This post is the first in a series in which RWJF scholars, fellows and alumni who are attending the American Public Health Association annual meeting reflect on the experience.

On your mark…. get set…. APHA!  Yes it is that time of year again for the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting & exposition.  Are you ready for all things public health?! 

APHA is my favorite conference to attend because it fulfills all of my public health senses.  I am a biostatistician interested in health disparities doing community-based participatory research (yes you read that correctly).  APHA is the one conference that speaks to all my research interests in one place.  There is no other conference that allows me to go to theta beta land with my statistics friends in the Applied Public Health Statistics Section and then discuss developing community-academic partnerships with both community and academic colleagues in the Community-Based Public Health Caucus (CBPHC).  Last year I served as the academic program planner for the CBPHC and this year I am section council of the Statistics section.

Some people say they don’t like APHA because it is too big but the New Yorker in me loves every moment of it.  I always arrive at the conference early and grab that phonebook-like program and attack it with a highlighter and sticky tabs the way only a true nerd could.  I spend an hour or so planning my life over the next few days; noting when and where I am presenting, where my colleagues and students are presenting and finding other scientific sessions I am interested in attending. Then I take a walk around the convention center locating the rooms where I will be presenting.  This makes life easier when over 10,000 people are walking though hallways, many of them lost; I don’t have to be one of them.

Barbara A. Garcia, M.P.A., a RWJF Community Health Leader (1993), began her duties as director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health in January. Garcia had been the Department’s deputy since 1999. “Becoming the director is a really exciting opportunity to continue the work I’ve been doing with the department,” she said.

Her appointment by then-mayor Gavin Newsom was announced in October at the Latino Heritage Month Celebration and Awards ceremony, where Garcia was honored for her contributions to the Latino community in health and medicine.

Garcia received the Community Health Leader award for her work at Salud Para La Gente in Watsonville, California. As the executive director of the small clinic in a rural, predominantly Latino community, Garcia transformed the clinic into a federally-qualified, bi-cultural comprehensive health care center.

Congratulations are in order for Sue Birch, R.N., M.B.A., an alum of the RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows program. In January, this blog reported that Colorado Governor-Elect John Hickenlooper had nominated Birch to serve as the executive director of that state’s Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. The Department administers the state’s Medicaid and Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) programs, which together cover more than 600,000 residents, as well as a number of other health care programs aimed at low-income families, the elderly and persons with disabilities. On February 14, the state Senate confirmed Birch to the post.

Since 1994, Birch has been CEO of the Northwest Colorado Visiting Nurse Association. In January, she told the Steamboat Today newspaper that a chief focus for her at the Department would be working “to get as much access as possible for all Coloradans” from the newly passed health reform law.

Read more about Birch’s confirmation. Read more about the RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows Program. For an overview of RWJF scholar and fellow opportunities, visit www.RWJFLeaders.org.

Congratulations are in order for Sue Birch, R.N., M.B.A., an alum of the RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows program. Colorado Governor-Elect John Hickenlooper has named her the new executive director of that state’s Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. The Department administers the state’s Medicaid and Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) programs, which together cover more than 600,000 residents, as well as a number of other health care programs aimed at low-income families, the elderly and persons with disabilities.

Since 1994, Birch has been CEO of the Northwest Colo­­­rado Visiting Nurse Association. “Sue Birch has made herself an expert on how to provide medical care in rural areas with limited budgets,” Hickenlooper said in making the announcement. “Her regional and collaborative approach will serve well to address health care issues on a statewide basis.”

Read more here.

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has appointed David Vlahov, Ph.D., R.N., the new dean of the School of Nursing. Vlahov is co-director of the national program office for the RWJF Health & Society Scholars program, and president of The New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM). His term will begin in April 2011.

Learn more about Vlahov and his new position.

Congratulations to Nirav Shah, M.D., M.P.H., who has been nominated by Governor-Elect Andrew Cuomo to serve as the Commissioner of the New York Department of Health. Shah is an alumnus of the RWJF Physician Faculty Scholars program (2007-2010) and the RWJF Clinical Scholars program (2001-2003).