CALL FOR ABSTRACTS — 140th APHA Annual Meeting

Theme: Prevention and Wellness Across the Lifespan

Medical Care

Submission Deadline: Friday, February 10, 2012

Medical Care Section invites abstracts for the 140th Annual Meeting of APHA in San Francisco, October 27 to 31, 2012. Abstracts should fit with this year’s theme of “Prevention and Wellness Across the Life Span” and relate to more specific concerns of the Section--advances toward universal and equal availability of quality health care and their challenges. These include safety of drugs and devices, evaluation and advocacy of public and business policies, ethics and history of practice and research, disparities of access and use, health services research, economics, efficiency, outcomes, special populations, cultural and political aspects of these issues, and others. The topics below, which reflect both Medical Care Section’s historical interests and its committees’ current focuses, suggest subjects for abstracts. The program planners may fashion new topics and combine or eliminate others, according to the distribution and numbers of submissions which our reviewers rate highly. We encourage creative approaches to urgent shortfalls of medical care in North America as well as in other continents.

• Applying Cultural Standards and Guides to Primary Care Delivery
  
• Barriers and Challenges to Health Care Access
  
• Comprehensive Care and Its Improvement from Incarceration to Community Life
  
• Drug & Trade Policy & Pharmacy Services: Providing Safe Drugs and Services
  
• Drug Policy & Pharmacy Services
  
• Drug Policy & Pharmacy Services Committee
  
• Editorial Board of Medical Care
  
• Frontier & Rural Health Study Group
  
• Health Care Advocacy and Communications
  
  • Health Care Advocacy: Lay, consumer, & grassroots groups
• Health Economics
  
  • Health Economics: Economic Evaluation of Interventions
  • Health Economics: Costs of Preventing, Screening, and Treating 
• Health Services Research 1
  
  • Health Services Research: Are Patients Treated According to Recommended Guidelines?
    
  • Health Services Research: Access to Care
    
  • Health Services Research: Late & Long-Term Effects of Chronic Disease
    
  • Health Services Research: Effectiveness and Efficiency
• Health Services Research Invited Session: Geographic Variations in Medicaid Spending
  
• Health Services Research Study Group
  
• Health Services Research: Approaches to Assessing Improved Care
  
• Health Services Research: Assuring Health Care Services
  
• Health Services Research: Nursing Staff Stability and Advancement
  
• Improving Quality of Primary Care Delivery with Surveys of Patients, Providers, and Services
  
  • Primary Care: Patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) 
  • Primary Care: Models
  • Primary Care: Cultural competence and health literacy 
  • Primary Care: Management and coordination
  • Primary Care: Practice-based research networks
• Invited Session: From ranches and hospitals to the home: Policy development for responsible antibiotic use across the spectrum
  
• Invited Session: Multi-Year Solitary Confinement in California and the Prisoner Hunger Strikes of 2011-12
  
• Invited Session: States Explore Single-Payer Options
  
• Issues of Measuring & Reporting 1
  
• Issues of Measuring & Reporting 2
  
• Jail & Prison Health
  
  • Jail & Prison Health: Risks, prevention, treatment
  • Jail & Prison Health: Cross-sector disparities & fairness
• Jail & Prison Health: Improving Health Among Incarcerated Persons
  
  • Drug & Trade Policy & Pharmacy Services: Conflicts of interest
  • Drug & Trade Policy & Pharmacy Services: Trade agreements, patents, & other obstacles to access, development, & markets
• Medical Care Business Meeting 1: Primary Care Networking
  
• Medical Care Business Meeting 2
  
• Medical Care Business Meeting 3
  
• Medical Care Business Meeting 4
  
• Medical Care Business Meeting 5
  
• Medical Care Poster Session 1: Health of military and other special populations
  
• Medical Care Poster Session 2: Analyses of Health Care Among Vulnerable Populations
  
• Medical Care Poster Session 3: Advancing Clinical Care and Health
  
• Medical Care Poster Session 4: Jail and Prison Health
  
• Medical Care Poster Session 5
  
• Medical Care Poster Session 6: Addressing Chronic Care
  
• Medical Care Poster Session 7: Administrative Data for Health Policy
  
• Medical Care unspecified
  
• Medicare and Medicaid in States' Experiences
  
• P. Ellen Parsons Memorial Session
  
• Pharmaceutical Interest Study Group
  
• Primary Care and Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMH)
  
• Primary Care and Public Health
  
• Primary Care of Chronic Conditions
  
• Primary Care: Primary Health Care Factors
  
• Primary Care: Psychological Approaches and Issues in Public Health
  
• Prison Health Study
  
• Quality Improvement of Procedures and Outcomes in Health Care Facilities
  
  • Quality Improvement: Ambulatory, community, & hospital care 
  • Quality Improvement: Iatrogenic and nosocomial risks 
• Racial or Ethnic Disparities
  
• Rural & Frontier Health
  
  • Rural & Frontier Health: Disparities of access, care, & outcomes
• Rural and Frontier Health Disparities and Challenges
  
• Social Sciences in Health
  
  • Social Sciences in Health: Cultural sensitivity in clinical settings & encounters
• Special Conditions with Multiple Facets: HIV-AIDS et al
  
• Student Mentoring 1
  
• Student Mentoring 2
  
• Student Paper Competition
  
• Tobacco-Related Risks & Services
  
• Universal Health Care
  
• Urban Health
  
• Veterans' Health
  
• Veterans' Health Care and Health Risks
  
• Women’s Health
  
  • Women’s Health: Vulnerable & Hard-to-Reach Populations

Medical Care Section welcomes contributed abstracts for oral and poster presentations from all participants in the Annual Meeting. Students may submit theirs for the Student Paper Award Competition (described below). The Co-Chairs, who arrange abstracts in sessions after reviewers score them, will try to honor preferences for oral or poster presentations. However, this is not always possible. If you believe that your abstract(s) would fit well with others, or if you intend it/them for solicited (or invited) sessions, please alert the program co-chairs when you submit your abstract(s). Invited or solicited sessions are those proposed and arranged by their organizers. (Medical Care Program Co-Chairs assist only as needed.) Such abstracts may be submitted at the same time as contributed abstracts and marked for invited sessions. Invited/solicited abstracts have a separate invitation and a later due date.

APHA requires the following of abstracts for presentation at its Annual Meeting:

• Abstracts should use up to 400 words to demonstrate for reviewers their scientific quality and significance to concerns of this Section.
• Presenters at the Annual Meeting must be individual members of APHA.
• All presenters must register for the Annual Meeting. (For guest participants in invited sessions, APHA can provide complimentary, one-day passes.)
• Abstracts may not be presented or published prior to the Annual Meeting. In addition, Medical Care and other sections, special primary interest groups, forums, and caucuses are planning some sessions jointly. Please share your ideas for cross- or multiple-member group sessions and, if inclined, help plan them. Our proactive collaboration should result in broad appeal across APHA groups.

STUDENT PAPER AWARD COMPETITION

Medical Care Section will select the five most highly rated student papers for presentation in an oral student session at the Annual Meeting and recognize the one judged as reflecting the best research and presentation. Like other abstracts, they should address topics of interest to the Section (listed above), have a length of up to 400 words, and be designated for the “Student Submission" session. Student authors must also furnish a letter for each abstract from an adviser (or other evidence of student status). Printed letters should bear thestudents' institutions’ letterheads. Advisers may attach letters to email sent to the Co-Chairs of Medical Care Section Program Planning (contact information below), who are happy to answer questions.

CONTINUING EDUCATION (CE) CREDIT

APHA values the ability to award continuing education credit to health professionals at its annual meetings. To do so, APHA needs the information requested when submitting abstracts. For sessions to be eligible for CE credit, presenters must submit:

1) abstracts free of trade or commercial product names;

2) at least one MEASURABLE objective per abstract in action words such as Explain, Demonstrate, Analyze, Formulate, Discuss, Compare, Differentiate, Describe, Name, Assess, Evaluate, Identify, Design, Define, or List (please DO NOT USE “understand” or “to learn” as they are unmeasurable); and

3) signed Conflict of Interest (Disclosure) forms with relevant Qualification Statements. (Please see an example of an acceptable Qualification Statement in a Disclosure form online.)

Thank you for helping qualify your session for CE credit! If you have questions concerning CE credit, please contact Annette Ferebee . Please contact the program planners (Medical Care Program Co-Chairs), Dr. Amy Fendrich or Jim Wohlleb, with other questions.