Question 5
What is your plan for recruiting and retaining early career professionals (ECPs) in APA?
Future and current practitioners must recognize APA as the primary source of information on designing a practice, disseminating research-to-practice information, providing knowledge on legal, ethical and insurance reimbursement issues, and promoting psychology in legislation. Young scholars must see APA as the leading source of information on new research methods, research ethics, participant recruitment, teaching and publication practices. I advocate ensuring that our conventions and publications address these issues and use targeted emails to disseminate this message to all potential members. We must advertise our strengths to grow. It is our APA, each of us needs to recruit a new member.
Question 6
How can APA best advocate for effective health and behavioral health care for our public during this time of political uncertainty?
The present U.S. political and cultural climate requires that APA institute a massive public education campaign. We must create alliances with state and provincial associations, psychology departments, health-care organizations, and all psychologists to feed information to mass media and social media outlets so the public understands how integrated health care and mental health care benefits our quality of life and individual and governmental finances. Lobbying at the federal, state and provincial levels is necessary for the survival of the services we have struggled to create for the benefit of our citizens. Each of us has a responsibility to do this.