IAPHS Welcomes New Members

Last August, IAPHS launched a membership drive.  In the months since, over 100 individuals and 8 institutions have joined as new members.  In doing so they have expanded the diversity of IAPHS, adding new perspectives to conversations about population health and its improvement.  They have also provided essential support to the IAPHS mission of advancing population health science and application.  We welcome them all!

Who are we now?  We have 274 current members – 255 individuals and 19 institutions.  Our individual members come from all over the United States and from China, Great Britain, Canada, and the Netherlands.  They span over 35 scientific professions and disciplines, ranging from Geography to Medicine; from Epidemiology to Economics; and from Urban Planning to Health Services Research.  Most live within academia, but a solid minority hail from other public and private institutions concerned with public health, health care, health policy, and health research.

We’re not done growing yet.  If you haven’t yet joined IAPHS (or have forgotten to renew), there are lots of reasons to sign up today.  In our last post about the campaign, we mentioned some of these:

• Opportunities for networking, leadership, and professional development that may be less accessible within larger organizations;
• Opportunities to connect with and hear from scientists from other disciplines with a focus on population health, along with representatives from public health, policy, and health care organizations;
• An active Blog that provides an opportunity to disseminate ideas and research to a broad interdisciplinary audience and up-to-date announcements about job, training and funding opportunities as well as conferences, webinars, calls for papers, and new publications – all curated for people with interests in population health; and
• Mentoring opportunities and resources that help scientists develop skills in interdisciplinary science, communication, and translation.

One of the best reasons to join is that IAPHS holds great conferences, and members get both early registration and deeply discounted registration fees.  Our meetings bring together a wide range of scholars from public health, social and behavioral sciences, medicine, and other areas such as health policy, urban planning, communication, social work, and education.  They foster conversations about population health that draw from different disciplinary perspectives and from practice and policy perspectives as well.

You won’t want to miss the 2018 conference, October 3-5 at the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC. Last year, there was a long waiting list, and some people were unable to register.  While we hope not to cap registration this year, joining now assures you a place at the meeting and lower registration fees.

The IAPHS Membership Drive will continue until March 31, 2018.  Please join, renew, or recruit your colleagues to help us continue to build IAPHS.  Then join us in Washington DC in October, where we will celebrate the results and our joint effort to advance population health and its contributions to improving health around the world.

–Anjum Hajat and Hedy Lee
Co-chairs, IAPHS Membership Committee