SPCPF

July 2002

Dear Colleagues:

I am pleased to begin my term as president of the Society of Primary Care Policy Fellows, and I look forward to a productive and challenging year ahead. Over the past year, the organization has taken great strides of positioning to broaden our influence. The challenge before us is to build on this momentum and to sustain the SPCPF as a strong, vital organization for advancing primary care policy, education, and research.

It is timely for us to identify key activities of the recent past and near future as we begin a new year in the organization:

• Last summer, we established a national headquarters office in Washington, DC. We continue to build the infrastructure of our national office to position ourselves for a significant presence as leaders in primary care.
• Earlier this year, we completed the Futures Project. A significant outcome of this project was the Web-based Primary Care Toolkit now available on the SPCPF Web site. This toolkit is a valuable resource for clinicians, consumers, and policymakers. Further products of this project include primary care policy papers currently in submission to national journals.
• We continue to expand our Web page to showcase primary care and maximize communications with members and the public. One specific project underway is to establish a repository of policy projects developed in the Fellowship.
• In October 2001, we hosted a meeting in conjunction with the American Public Health Association conference. The meeting offered the opportunity to members of the SPCPF to discuss current issues and to identify opportunities for the organization.
• On September 19-20, 2002, we will host the SPCPF 2002 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The program will feature national updates on primary care policy & research, as well individual primary care projects from the Fellows. We are also devoting time in the program to strategic planning relative to primary care policy and the SPCPF.
• We will continue to provide and identify opportunities for networking among the Fellows and collaborative activities for shaping primary care policy.

I know that we each work at our individual levels to promote primary care, and I urge you to enhance your commitment at the broader level through participation in the SPCPF. We need for Fellows to maintain Active Status in the organization to support our activities. As well, we need for the nominating organizations and other groups or individuals interested in primary care to join us as Associate and Sustaining members. Together, we can affect primary care policy, education, and research at multi levels to enhance quality health care.

Thank you for your ongoing support of primary care and the SPCPF.

Sincerely,

Kirsten Thomsen, PA-C
President

Affecting primary care policy, education, research, and service
at the local, state, national, and international levels.