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SBM Outlook Spotlight - Membership Council - Spring/Summer 2011

Brent Van Dorsten, PhD, Membership Council Chair

The Society of Behavioral Medicine's Membership Council is one of the five permanent councils and is charged with recruitment and retention of members. In accordance with the SBM mission statement, this is a multi-dimensional goal focused on recruiting interdisciplinary members involved in a variety of clinical, research, administrative and educational pursuits.

The Membership Council attempts to represent multiple professional specialties and a variety of Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The current Membership Council is composed of the following members (listed with their SIG affiliations):

Brent Van Dorsten, PhD - Membership Council Chairperson; Pain; Diabetes; Integrated Primary Care
Marcella H. Boynton, MA - Health Decision Making; Multiple Health Behavior Change; Student
Jennifer K. Carroll, MD, MPH - Evidence Based Behavioral Medicine
Dean G. Cruess, PhD - Cancer; Evidence Based Behavioral Medicine; Multiple Health Behavior Change; Women's Health
Sasha A. Fleary, MS - Child & Family Health; Ethnic Minority & Multicultural Health; Health Decision Making; Multiple Health Behavior Change; Obesity & Eating Disorders; Physical Activity; Student
Jeffrey L. Goodie, PhD, ABPP - Aging; Integrated Primary Care; Obesity & Eating Disorders; Pain
Robert Motl, PhD - Physical Activity
Christina Psaros, MS - Multiple Health Behavior Change; Obesity & Eating Disorders; Evidence Based Behavioral Medicine; Women's Health (Co-Chair)
Barbara Resnick, PhD, CRNP, FAAN, FAANP - SIG Council Chair
Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin, PhD - Evidence Based Behavioral Medicine (Co-Chair); Cancer

At the SBM annual meeting, the Membership Council sponsors a New Member Breakfast Roundtable to provide orientation to new members regarding the myriad opportunities available within the organization and to familiarize them with the array of SIG activities. The Membership Council also staffs a membership information booth to facilitate membership application for non-member meeting attendees. The Membership Council looks forward to collaborating with the Program Committee to develop creative strategies to increase local professional attendance at SBM's 2012 Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, LA and to retain attendees as members. In the current turbulent financial times being faced by academic, medical, and practitioner professionals, the Membership Council requests the assistance of all SBM members to encourage our colleagues to remain members and to attract new members to serve our collective mission.

Call to Action:

  1. A "grass roots" recruitment effort aims to increase membership by asking current SBM members to contact 2-5 colleagues who are not current SBM members to encourage them to renew membership or join anew. We hope every SBM member will recruit a colleague who can benefit from involvement in order to sustain our membership numbers and national visibility.
  2. In conjunction with the Scientific and Professional Liaison Council, the Membership Council will participate in efforts to recruit new members via collaborative interactions with other professional organizations who share SBM's vision and initiatives.
  3. The Membership Council is devising ways to recruit more non-member meeting attendees to join SBM.
  4. The Membership Council aims to increase the number of members from a variety of professional settings including but not limited to basic behavioral scientists, clinical care providers, physicians, nurses, educators, administrators, and policy makers.
  5. The Membership Council will continue to investigate effective strategies to retain student members and post-doctoral fellow members as they transition from trainee to autonomous professional.

 

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