Candidates for APA President
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 candidate to answer two questions each for the June, July/August and September issues of the Monitor.
In the June issue:
What steps would you take in the next three years toward accomplishing your vision for APA?
What would you rank as your top three priorities for APA and why?
In the July/August issue:
How will you advance the science and practice of psychology 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 this 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
What social or professional issues, e.g., diversity, aging, managed care, prescription privileges, will you emphasize during your term?
Promoting wellness, ethnic minority and women's issues, and expanding opportunities across the discipline each resonate very strongly for me. As an early advocate for psychology's role in understanding and applying advances in research into human genetics, I will continue to actively support genetic psychology. I am also eager to improve our capacity for studying and serving an aging population.
I would certainly use my presidency to promote prescriptive authority and address the shortcomings of managed care. Educating consumers to recognize the value of our skills and to advocate for their own health-care needs remains our most effective strategy.
How do you propose to deal with membership recruitment and retention?
Frankly, we must turn President Kennedy's dictum on its head and "ask not what its members can do for APA," but rather ask what APA can do for its members. Identifying opportunities in the marketplace and helping training programs adapt to prepare graduates to fill real and existing needs will give psychologists a reason to join and remain with APA.
The evolution of APAGS provides a model of effectively identifying and meeting the needs of a new constituency. The association must become equally effective in serving recent graduates as they launch their scientific, academic or professional careers.
Gerald C. Davison, PhD
What social or professional issues, e.g., diversity, aging, managed care, prescription privileges, will you emphasize during your term?
Managed care constitutes a challenge and an opportunity not only for practitioners but for all psychologists. We do not have to embrace current models and practices of managed care to accept the ethical and legal imperative that clinicians should intrude as little as possible into the lives of their patients consistent with providing the maximum benefits, and that these goals can be achieved by applied psychologists learning and practicing the best that the science can offer, and by carefully and continually monitoring during treatment the changes shown by the individual patient.
How do you propose to deal with membership recruitment and retention?
I have been concerned for many years with the disaffection of many of our less-applied colleagues, some of whom have left APA for other organizations (rather than maintaining multiple memberships). Worse still, younger cohorts of psychologists, including those in applied specialties, no longer welcome the earning of their doctoral degrees as a much-anticipated occasion to become full members of APA. I would hope to staunch this wound by enhancing the relevance of APA for those who are alienated. I believe that my focus on the complex interdependence of creative science and innovative application can contribute to recruitment and retention.
Stanley Moldawsky, PhD
What social or professional issues, e.g., diversity, aging, managed care, prescription privileges, will you emphasize during your term?
The following areas will get very special attention from me during my presidency:
The continued battle against managed care by emphasizing lawsuits, legislation in Congress to give citizens the right to sue their HMOs for denied treatment, public education, expansion of market opportunities for psychologists.
Health-care reform. Collaboration with other professions to create a better health-care delivery system covering all Americans.
Prescription privileges for qualified doctoral psychologists.
Psychological telehealth. Developing standards of ethical conduct for the new marketplace.
Greater inclusion of diverse groups into APA Governance. We need a president who is passionate about all of the above issues and can move that agenda. I can!
How do you propose to deal with membreship recruitment and retention?
We need to work closely with APAGS to socialize graduate students into joining APA and their state associations. The Science Directorate staff has been visiting graduate departments of psychology. We need to step up this program and send more "ambassadors" to the field.
APA must satisfy the needs of all its constituencies. We must support programs for science and practice while building net worth slowly.
I propose to:
Research new members' attitudes toward APA.
Work with the directorates to implement suggestions emerging from the research.
George P. Taylor, PhD
What social or professional issues, e.g., diversity, aging, managed care, prescription privileges, will you emphasize during your term?
Many social and professional issues deserve emphasis. Some are being addressed with effective processes. Managed care, aging and prescriptive privileges are such issues.
Beyond these, as president I would emphasize these two social issues:
Diversity within our association and our society. The significance of this diversity needs to be clarified so its true meaning can impact our profession; then our profession can offer even more back to our society.
The electronic revolution's psychological ramifications: socialization, isolation, downtime, speed, privacy, ethics. We have the opportunity to lead and to progress with this revolution, and it is wise to do so.
How do you propose to deal with membership recruitment and retention?
These two issues are related, but I think at this point we are not sure how. Therefore, I would devote a year's time to assembling what we do know and, more importantly, learning what we do not know about why members join, why they stay and why they leave when they do. I would also seek to understand why some psychologists don't join at all. What do people want? What can we offer? How can we offer what they want? With these answers, I will submit recommendations and seek to implement as many as are feasible.
Philip G. Zimbardo
What social or professional issues, e.g., diversity, aging, managed care, prescription privileges, will you emphasize during your term?
First priority: working tirelessly toward solutions to "turf war" hostilities between cultures of Practice and cultures of Science. Encouraging constituents to go above "bread and butter" concerns to higher grounds of new respect and mutual appreciation for indispensable contributions of clinical insights and judgments alongside rigorous empirical research, testable theories and data-based conclusions.
Making psychology more inclusive, globalized, caring and socially relevant.
Engendering greater pride in and prestige to our profession via potent public relations campaigns and better media coverage of all that's wonderful about our science, practice, public interest and education.
Innovative public education campaigning.
Better budget-management economies.
How do you propose to deal with membership recruitment and retention?
Opening pipelines of new membership: attracting more undergraduate psychology majors, especially minorities, to broadened career opportunities in psychology; welcoming the graduate student association to dialogue with APA Board in planning novel recruiting strategies.
Personalizing membership appeals.
Boosting science memberships, sustaining practice memberships, through greater awareness of APA's vigorous advocacy for congressional legislation and research funding; promoting APA/American Psychological Society dual memberships.
Better public relations of vital initiatives coming out of APA's directorates.
Generating new incentives to join; discounts on electronic journals.
I'll be a "listening president," surveying current and potential members, making my e-mail address available to hear individual suggestions.
