CALL FOR ABSTRACTS — 141st APHA Annual Meeting

Theme: Think Global, Act Local: Best Practices Around the World

Medical Care

Submission Deadline: Friday, February 15, 2013

For the 141st Annual Meeting, in Boston, Medical Care Section invites abstracts that fit with this year’s theme (in the title above) and with the Section's interests--advances toward universal and equitable access to quality health care and health. These embrace advocacy of industry, education, government, and professional policies congruent with these interests; ethics and history of practice and research; disparities of access, use, and outcomes; health services research; health economics and quality of care; women; incarcerated, military, native, and other special populations; cultural, environmental, and political aspects; safety of drugs and devices; as well as others.

The topics below, reflecting both historical concerns and committees' current focuses, suggest subjects for abstracts. They are neither prescriptive nor exclusive. The Section's program planners may fashion new topics and combine or eliminate others, according to the distribution and quantity of highly rated submissions. We welcome any abstracts that reflect good science and align broadly with interests and values prompted by the following topics.

• Advancing the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices in Community Health Centers: Research of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN)
  
• Chronic disease costs and quality care
  
• Chronic diseases management
  
• Disparities by ethnicity or race, gender, and obesity
  
  • Disparities in access/availability, utilization, costs, and outcomes
  • Interventions to improve equity and fairness  
  • Cultural competence and health literacy
• Disparities in access and outcomes of procedures
  
• Disparities of health care access and health status: Economic factors
  
• Disparities of services utilization by attitude, environment, and geography
  
• Disparity amelioration through professional education
  
• Drug review and approval in US and Europe, adverse effects, hospital use, prior approval
  
  • Trade and governance
  • Marketing and research
  • Environmental and public health impacts of medication use and disposal
• Health Services Research update--Challenges of implementing the Affordable Care Act: The health care needs of vulnerable populations with behavioral health and complex chronic conditions
  
• Health economics and costs
  
• Health economics: Costs for unserved children, immigrants, and other groups
  
  • International comparisons 
  • Health care finance and delivery
  • Health care reform 
  • Comparative effectiveness
• Health economics: State and county experiences with managing health care costs
  
• Health issues of veterans, women, and other special populations poster session
  
• Health services
  
• Health services research
  
  • Evidence-based medicine
  • Patient-centered decision-making
  • Cancer surveillance, services, and survival
  • Coordinating, managing, and evaluating care delivery
  • Social determinants of health, medical care, and health outcome
• Health services research: Better cancer management innovations and interventions
  
• Health services research: How do organizational and professional practices affect health?
  
• Health services research: How will the ACA meet demands of vulnerable groups in California?
  
• Health services research: Patient-provider interactions in health care
  
• History of public health
  
• Innovations and advances yielding efficiency and quality of care
  
• Jail and prison health
  
  • Conditions, risks, prevention, and treatment
  • Effects on the community
  • Juvenile justice
• Jail and prison health poster session
  
• Medical Care Section business meeting 1
  
• Medical Care Section business meeting 2
  
• Medical Care Section business meeting 3
  
• Medical Care Section business meeting 4
  
• Medical Care Section business meeting 5
  
• Medication use in US nursing homes
  
• Patient-centered medical home (PCMH)
  
• Pharmacy in protecting and sustaining community health
  
• Primary care delivery among disparate populations
  
• Primary care poster session
  
• Primary care: Models for improving care and sustaining health
  
  • Patient-centered medical homes 
  • The chronic care model and other models of primary care
• Primary care: Models of professional training for improving care and public health
  
• Primary care: empowering patients and improving their health
  
• Quality of care
  
• Quality of care: Cancer detection and management
  
• Quality of in-patient care
  
• Rural and Frontier Health Committee
  
• Rural and frontier health: Rural-urban disparities 1
  
  • Information technology for education and care
• Rural and frontier health: Rural-urban disparities 2
  
• Social, religious, gender, and class factors affecting health care and health status: Poster session
  
• Student mentoring (for any student attending APHA annual meeting)
  
• Student submissions
  
• Veterans' health: Behavioral, mental, and neurological conditions
  

Medical Care Section welcomes contributed abstracts for oral or poster presentations from all participants in the Annual Meeting. If they choose, students may submit theirs for the Student Paper Award Competition (as described below).

The Program Co-Chairs, who arrange abstracts into sessions after reviewers score them, try to honor preferences for oral, poster, or roundtable 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 sessions, please alert the Program Co-Chairs when you submit your abstract(s).

Solicited sessions are proposed and arranged at the initiative of other organizers. Medical Care Program Co-Chairs assist with solicited sessions only as needed. Such abstracts may be submitted at the same time as contributed abstracts (and marked for solicited sessions) or later, starting March 25, when APHA accepts solicited abstracts. If you intend to organize a solicited session, please notify the Medical Care Program Co-Chairs as early as possible of its topic and titles of abstracts.

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

• Abstracts should use up to 400 words (longer than APHA's default length) to demonstrate their scientific quality and alignment with interests of the Medical Care Section.
• Reviewers expect abstracts to reflect work which has been carried out rather than just proposed. An explanation of why this expectation may be inappropriate should accompany abstracts not reporting accomplished efforts.
• Presenters at the Annual Meeting must be individual members of APHA.
• All presenters must register for the Annual Meeting. (For guest participants in solicited sessions, APHA can provide complimentary, one-day passes.)
• Abstracts may not be presented or published prior to the Annual Meeting.
• Please submit an abstract to only one section of APHA.
• 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, use up to 400 words, and designate themselves at submission for the “Student Submission" session. Students submitting abstracts for this competition must also furnish a letter for each abstract from an adviser (or other school official) assuring their student status. Advisers may attach letters to email or send them via USPS or fax to the Medical Care Section Program Co-Chairs (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 following information, requested when submitting abstracts, with every abstract. APHA awards credit for entire sessions rather than for individual presentations. For sessions to be eligible for CE credit, presenters must submit:

1) abstracts free of trade and commercial product names;

2) at least one MEASURABLE objective per abstract using 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 (Financial 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. Özlem H. Ersin or Jim Wohlleb, with other questions.