Candidates for APA President
Candidates state priorities, three-year plan
In a continuing effort to provide members with information on president-elect candidates' views of pertinent issues in psychology, APA's Election Committee has asked each of the candidates to submit a 300-word statement about themselves and to answer six questions. The statements appear in this issue. The candidates will answer two questions each for the June, July/August and September issues of the Monitor.
In this issue:
What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?
What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?
In the July/August issue:
How will you advance the Decade of Behavior and how will you advance the education of the general public about the value of psychology?
How will you advance the protection of the doctoral standard and address the supply and demand issue?
In the September issue:
What social or professional issues, e.g., diversity, aging, managed care, prescription privileges, will you emphasize during your term?
How do you propose to deal with membership recruitment and retention?
Candidates answers are limited to 100 words for each question.
Alice F. Chang, PhD
As a survivor of breast cancer, I know a little something about overcoming serious adversity and about the important role psychology plays in health care. Our discipline is now facing its own serious adversity in the rapidly and radically changing market forces affecting our profession, science and training. (I am struggling to resist the temptation to carry the analogy between our discipline's experience and my own to the point of identifying managed care as a "cancer.") We can make this a time of rebirth and renewal for the discipline and the association by recognizing the very real strengths of our training and expertise as we redefine and expand the role of psychology in our society.
Through mechanisms such as the national public education campaign, "Talk to Someone Who Can Help," and the Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention and Training in Psychology, APA has begun the process of responding effectively to the threats and the opportunities facing organized psychology in the 21st century. APA must continue its efforts to promote the value of psychology in the public consciousness and to assure that our training programs address the needs of a changing society and a changing marketplace. All members must have access to training enabling them to adjust to new roles and to take advantage of new applications of their core skills.
Emerging technologies will continue to provide psychologists with opportunities for service delivery, such as e-health, unimaginable even a decade ago. We must develop institutional mechanisms to move us ahead of the curve as technology continues to expand. We must also reinforce psychology's vital role in collaborative services in fields like gerontology and oncology. And we must continue in our commitment to psychopharmocology and to the responsible application of prescription privileges.
What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?
As APA president, I would want to build upon and expand existing efforts to serve professional, research and academic psychologists by:
Developing and promoting new opportunities and even new identities for psychologists. We have the creativity to apply our knowledge and the scientific method to all areas of living.
Assuring that our training prepares us to respond to demographic changes in our diverse and aging society. We will then find opportunities to better serve the public at every level and in every domain.
Establishing mechanisms to create and anticipate new markets instead of reacting to changing markets.
What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?
I would like to see APA play an even more active role in the rebirth of our discipline. Trying as they are, our discipline seems to emerge from these periodic crises of identity stronger and more vital for having undergone the process of redefinition. We need to know more about behavior and to create new opportunities to apply that knowledge. We need to put ourselves a step ahead of the explosion in communications technologies and to anticipate the ways these technologies can be employed in our research, training and profession. We need to better reflect and serve a changing population.
Dr. Gerald C. Davison
One of the most challenging goals for the next president of APA will be to confront and reduce the growing tensions, within the field of psychology and the APA itself, between practitioners and scientists. These divisions are neither necessary nor beneficial. As both a clinician and a scientist (and above all a scientist-practitioner), I am well positioned to represent both sides.
My research emphasizes the study and application of principles of psychology to complex real-world human interactions. I also write and teach about philosophical and ethical issues in both basic and applied psychology. By experience and commitment I can bring a balanced perspective to our very diverse APA.
Good science and accountable, effective application are interdependent. I have been guided by this belief throughout my career and have contributed to promoting the importance of psychological science in education, research and application.
Psychologists are experts on human behavior and complex change processes. We must reaffirm our strengths and identities as psychologists. Our research methodologies, knowledge base in psychological science, and innovative, empirically grounded approaches are indispensable to broad-spectrum assessment and interventions and, in many cases, superior to psychoactive drugs.
I am aware of the concerns and uncertainties that clinicians face in this era of managed care, some features of which as currently implemented are inconsistent with high-quality service. A science-based applied psychology is, to my mind, the best way to maintain a pre-eminent position. We should not underestimate what we have to offer as behavioral scientists.
I have demonstrated in many contexts an ability to work productively with colleagues, including those with whom I may have differences of opinion, and to communicate with laypersons in an effective and respectful fashion. These qualities will enable me to serve our organization and to represent APA effectively to relevant governmental agencies and to the public. Please visit: www-rcf.usc.edu/~gdaviso.
What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?
Pseudoscience sometimes takes the place of psychological science and application in the media. I believe that APA should be assertive in correcting unfounded material presented as fact to the public.
The changes and advances in our science and applications make the continuing education of psychologists very important. APA should continue to improve its system of approval of CE sponsors.
Implicit in the above is my commitment to maintaining and furthering APA as an organization that can be a professional home both to those whose primary passions are scientific research and to those whose muse is the applied.
What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?
I believe that the importance I attach to science and innovative evidence-based application will benefit both APA and the public. I will use appropriate opportunities to explain and promote my initiatives to the membership and to general audiences. I will make myself available to elaborate upon and discuss both my priorities and those of my colleagues in an effort to lead APA to a realization of the promise that psychology has for promoting social good as an empirically based science and profession.
Stanley Moldawsky, PhD
I am in full-time private practice and I'm proud to have been involved in the many struggles APA has undertaken to support practice: fighting managed care through lawsuits; supporting legislation aimed at patient protections, especially the right to sue a managed-care company; and by promoting APA's national public education campaign, which I introduced to the Council of Representatives on behalf of practice. I want to expand that campaign, increase the number of lawsuits and support legislation that will give practitioners back the right to make clinical decisions.
Corporate America has taken over health care and made it another profit-making commodity. Psychotherapy has been limited and practitioners are hassled rather than supported. Drug manufacturers have assaulted the public with advertising, asserting that a pill can cure any and all problems. "Relationship" has been taken out of therapy and replaced with medication, but the healing relationship is fundamental for the practicing psychologist. Listening and trying to understand what pains our patients should never be forsaken. If the relationship is insufficient to contain the anxiety or depression in our patients, it becomes important to relieve the symptoms with meds. The danger is to rely on the medication first rather than the relationship first. Our strength is our training as psychotherapists first. I support prescription privileges for psychologists. They can unprescribe those overprescribed by untrained physicians. Good training is available for psychologists in psychopharmacology.
On Jan. 1, 2001, APA will have in place a companion organization that will have greater freedom to promote the practice of psychology through lobbying. It will take leadership to ensure that this (c)(6) organization serves not only the needs of practice, but of all APA.
Although my focus is clearly practice, I will never lose sight of the diverse needs and interests of APA's membership and the public we serve.
What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?
Public education. I introduced the motion to create APA's Public Education Campaign, authorizing the association to spend $6.5 million over five years. Practitioners are hurting and we must encourage the public to "Talk to Someone Who Can Help."
Health-care reform. Our current health-care system with managed care as its cornerstone has failed to protect patients, support practitioners and take care of 44 million uninsured. We need a new, fair system and psychology must be there to develop it.
Prescription privileges for psychologists. An integrative model for psychologists in which the therapeutic relationship as primary and prescribing medications as an adjunct is necessary. Trained psychologists can prevent overprescribing by physicians.
What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?
Public education. I will ask the Council of Representatives to double its annual appropriation to enhance the very successful Public Education Campaign. I will continue to bring coordinators to the State Leadership Conference for training and support.
Health-care reform. I will form a Presidential Task Force On Health Care Reform to plan strategies for joining with many other stakeholders in creating a new health-care delivery system. Psychology must be there as a new delivery system is fashioned.
Prescription privileges for psychologists. I will support state association initiatives to advance the legislative program. I will support the Practice Directorate's efforts to send experts to the states to counsel and advise state psychological associations on strategies.
George P. Taylor, PhD
Like Isaac Newton, we stand on the shoulders of giants--those who went before us. And we offer our shoulders, to those we serve now, and to those yet to come.
APA comprises the largest associated group of psychologists in the world, comprised of groups with varied agendas. We flourish best together.
The branches--science, academe, education, public issues and practice--strengthen the usefulness of the whole. Bonds tie our perspectives together. My goal will be to encourage both the branches and the bonds to benefit the association.
Psychology is increasingly of value to this world. The mission of our association is increasingly crucial, through focused applications and abstract science.
Yet, we face mind-boggling changes. Techniques are changing. Tenure is changing. Patterns of reimbursement are changing. The very borderlines of psychology are changing. And the populations we serve are changing.
We meet these challenges well, through structures and collaboration between structures. Practice feeds and is fed by science. Both form and are informed by education. Our public interest addresses needs of our society in a disciplined, responsible manner.
It is our time to stand as giants, to support those who will follow us, our students and those in our society yet to be served by our practice, or informed by our science. We have valuable knowledge and we are using it. Still, even as we are effective, we must do more.
I challenge us to give more to get more. Give more money to the organizations for their various purposes. Get more protection for our discipline and those we serve. Give more effort to service and education. Get more results and support for the good we can do.
More for more is the basic thrust of my presidential aspirations.
What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?
Achieve broader opportunities and roles, and more protection for the discipline ofpsychology in all fields: health and institutionalpractice, academia, science and public service.
Achieve more public visibility and influence, by creating "give-psychology-away" packages such as in the "Warning Signs" project with MTV, or teaching modules, and build on that influence to achieve places at the tables where policy-establishing discussions on health, science, public interest and education occur.
Achieve a broader sense of cohesion, connection and personal involvement within the psychological community.
What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?
Broadly, enhance the directorates' work, and ensure the companion organization's success, enabling more advocacy and lobbying for the association. Specifically:
Provide greater association support for achieving prescriptive privileges; broaden the definition of applied health work to "health," which would include but not be limited to "mental health."
Increase support for the public education campaign and for the Decade of Behavior initiatives to create packages that are immediately useful for the public, as in the "Warning Signs" effort.
Have more contact between governance members and members at large; seek to have our association be more representative of our country's diverse makeup.
Philip G. Zimbardo, PhD
Psychology is an amazing discipline, a truly wonderful profession in which to work. Its research boundaries keep expanding, becoming more micro and more macro simultaneously, from brain cell action to cultural influences, and all fascinating phenomena in between. We are applying our knowledge to improve the quality of life in vital ways, while also relieving human suffering in a diverse array of clients. The demands for psychology are reflected in increasing course enrollments across the entire educational curriculum.
But psychology is facing a sea change. Major forces are at work reshaping traditional perspectives on research, practice and education. The technological revolution offers opportunities for innovative education both in and beyond classroom walls. Creative approaches to online e-therapy and e-health delivery will give untold millions access to our expert healers. On the horizon are fundamental changes in psychology's traditional perspectives as women and minorities assume greater prominence in our field. The influence of American psychology is spreading around the globe, but its assumptions are being confronted with alternative views on universals of nature and nurture.
APA needs a president who combines openness to such challenges with wisdom derived from years of service in the trenches of research, practice, teaching and application. A charismatic leader needs to reflect and respect the global interconnectedness of scientific psychology, new conceptions of therapy and education and technology.
I will be the president who makes education our top priority, applying our research knowledge to improve student learning and teacher effectiveness. I will foster strategic alliances between our professional schools and universities, promoting mutual respect between researchers and practitioners. I will make psychology more inclusive by embracing the contributions of gays, lesbians and ethnic minorities. I will work to make psychology more influential in public policy, in research funding, and more positive in its public image.
What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?
Delivering mental health care to millions needing it but not utilizing available services. Creating parity for mental health and physical health care. Recognizing the value of complementary approaches to mind-body healing.
Applying research knowledge from cognitive, motivational, developmental and social psychology to transform educational practice from preschool through graduate school.
Building on the renewed awareness of our mutual interests and current APA initiatives toward improving relations between practitioners and researchers. According greater respect for the scientific foundation of contemporary psychology and fuller appreciation of practitioners' contributions in applying psychology to treat mental and behavioral problems.
What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?
Fostering cooperation and sharing resources between professional schools and universities.
Increasing our pride as psychologists by more positive media coverage, through workshops and fellowships for national and local media science writers to appreciate psychological research as they do biological; supporting development of new video programs revealing the excitement and utility of psychology, effectively communicating to the public the meaning of "The Decade of Behavior."
Greatly expanding APA's current involvement in e-health, e-therapy, tele-learning and electronic publishing.
Bringing new, diverse voices into APA governance, more women, minorities and young professionals.
Creating a Presidential Psychological Advisory Council, akin to the economists'.
