President's Report 2001-02
Southwest Chapter, AMWA

Membership

Chapter membership is 219 as of January 2, 2002.

Finances

The chapter has a balanced budget and a healthy financial reserve.

Major Developments

In addition to our regular educational programs (see below), the Southwest Chapter established four principle goals for the 2001-2002 program year.

1. A continuing problem for the Southwest Chapter has been the large geographical area that we encompass (Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma). Funding has not been available for our regional groups to develop their own programs, and it is extremely difficult for regional members to attend our educational meetings in Houston. To improve this situation, we have:

a. Made $200 available for each regional director to use at her own discretion to fund a local event or to offset the cost of travel to the AMWA Southwest board meeting in March. We anticipate being able to increase this level of funding in future years.

b. Purchased a digital video camera to film all educational events in Houston. Videotapes will be available to all regional directors on request so that they can benefit from our educational programs.

2. In the 1999-2000 program year, we had just begun to plan a chapter website; that website (www.amwasouthwest.org) is now in its second full year of service. A major goal this year was to expand the electronic basis of the chapter, utilizing new technologies to increase participation in chapter events, encourage new membership, and cut costs associated with hard-copy mailouts. To this end, we have:

a. Conducted our first ever "virtual" board meeting, using America Online Instant Messenger Technology. It is very difficult for our regional directors to come to our semi-annual board meetings, and this has significantly decreased their important contributions to chapter affairs. Every board member participated in this on-line meeting, and many controversial issues were enthusiastically debated. The ground rules we set up beforehand for this event seemed to work quite well, although certain areas will require some fine-tuning for future meetings of this kind.

b. We have begun preliminary trials of publishing our newsletter on the web. The last edition (March 2002) was our first newsletter to be published only on the web. [A small number of hard copies were printed for distribution to members for whom email addresses were not available.] Our email list was aggressively updated prior to this, and all members on the list were alerted that the newsletter was available for downloading. We will be soliciting feedback from members about this method of communication versus mailouts of hard copies. We anticipate that an all-electronic newsletter will save the chapter around $1200 per year in publication and mailing charges, which we plan to allocate to our regional directors and to future educational programs.

3. The Southwest Chapter has long been interested in setting up a regional core curriculum workshop. Most chapter members do not attend the Annual conference (less than 25% each year), and would be interested in pursuing their curriculum certificates through local workshops. Our program chair and assistant-program chair are currently in the process of organizing our first core curriculum workshop to be held in Houston in Fall, 2002.

4. The Southwest Chapter has made application to the Internal Revenue Service for recognition as a 501(c)(3) organization. If granted, this designation should make fundraising in the extensive local biomedical community much easier, allowing us to expand our educational programs and our scholarship program.

Programs — Houston

July 21, 2001; Clear Lake, Texas
Thomas Gegeny, MS, ELS, Program Chair, gave a presentation entitle "Internet Resources and Strategies for Researching Biomedical Information. Tom guided the attendees through several websites (search engines, biomedical megasites, etc.) and some of their features, illustrating how to find desired information more quickly and to weed out unnecessary information. He also gave a demonstration of the powerful databases "PubMed" and "Gateway" available from the National Library of Medicine.

September 14, 2001, Houston, Texas
Dr. Leonard Zwelling, Vice-President for Research Administration at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, addressed ethical issues related to clinical trials, conflicts of interest, and patients' rights. This lecture was videotaped for the use of regional chapter groups.

October 17, 2001, Houston, Texas
A field trip was held at the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office, including an extensive tour of the facilities and a chance to view several autopsies in progress.

December 5, 2001, Houston, Texas
The chapter held its annual holiday gala at Major's Scientific Book Store. The event included a panel discussion on "Building Successful Relationships with clients.

January 23, 2002, Houston, Texas
Our annual McGovern Award was presented to Paula L. Knudson, Executive Coordinator of the Office of Research Support Communities for the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Ms. Knudson presented a lecture titled "The Minefields Surrounding Informed Consent for Research."

March 20, 2002, Houston, Texas
Dr. ZoAnn Dreyer of Baylor College of Medicine and Fox 26 Television news will talk about the processes involved in producing health segments aimed at informing the public about important health and safety issues.

May 15, 2002, Houston, Texas
This annual meeting will feature career roundtable discussions, with each discussion led by a chapter member with a specific area of expertise.

Programs — Regional

Albuquerque
The Albuquerque AMWA group will sponsor an author evening at a local books store on March 20, 2002. Nancy Joste, MD, co-author of "Abnormal Pap Smears-What Every Woman needs to Know" will give a presentation. Regional director Janet Yagoa Shagam, PhD, will give a presentation entitled "Medical and Science Writing-A career for the truly curious" at a workshop for young women grades 6-12. Dr. Shagoda is also teaching an upper-level/graduate seminar on "Writing about medicine and science" at the University of New Mexico.

Arkansas
Regional Director Caroline J. Simmons is organizing a "get acquainted" dinner in Little Rock for area members to meet and to discuss ideas for future events.

Louisiana
Regional Director Paula Zimlicki is in the process of contacting all Louisiana members to get input about getting together for a program or other ways of keeping in touch on a regular basis.

Scholarship Program

We are in the second year of our scholarship program, designed to encourage a promising student in the field of medical communication. Participants are required to submit a 500-word essay which will be judged by a panel of AMWA chapter members. The winner will receive a check for $500 and an honorary one-year student membership in AMWA Southwest.

Respectfully submitted,

Lorraine Cherry
Chapter President, 2001-02

• Diane Hackett
• Barbara Gastel
• Janet Yagoda Shagam
• Pamela Paradis Tice
• Maureen Goode