On February 7, the Health Professions and Nursing Education Coalition, of which the American Psychological Association is a member, hosted a hill briefing titled, "Strengthening the Health Safety Net, Title VII and Title VIII Health Professions Training and Nursing Workforce Programs." Held in the Rayburn House office building, the briefing consisted of a panel of speakers including David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., former U.S. Surgeon General and Director of the Centers of Excellence on Health Disparities.

Following the briefing, congressional staff were invited to join numerous health professionals representing the full range of health professions training and nursing workforce programs including recent grantees of the Graduate Psychology Education (GPE) Program. Representing the GPE Program were FY 2007 grantees Barbara Bonner, Ph.D., Director of the University of Oklahoma's Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, and Doug Tynan, Ph.D., from Nemours Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children. Dr. Bonner's GPE grant, The Interdisciplinary Training Initiative for Underserved Children (ITIUC) aims to improve the health of abused or traumatized children and adolescents by increasing psychology trainee's competencies including knowledge, attitudes, and skills to work with underserved children through a discipline-specific and interdisciplinary training program. Dr. Tynan's GPE grant is an integrated model combining primary care pediatrics and psychology. Psychology residents in their final year of training are committed to a rotation in a primary care clinic in a medically underserved community and faculty psychologists and pediatricians from Nemours are on site at these communities to provide supervision and direct clinical teaching.

Throughout the open house, Dr. Bonner and Dr. Tynan were able to inform congressional staff of their work and the services their GPE programs provide and also interact with other representatives of the health professions training and nursing workforce programs. Following the open house, Dr. Bonner had a chance to meet with staff members from the offices of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) to discuss FY 2009 appropriations for the GPE Program. By participating in programs like these, the Graduate Psychology Education (GPE) Program can hopefully gain wider exposure which may help in garnering federal funding for years to come.

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