On this first day of my year as President of Division 42, I wish you a healthy, profitable, happy, and harmonious new year. I also want publicly to thank President Laura Barbanel, Past President Lillian Comas-Diaz, and outgoing Treasurer Stanley Graham along with the 2007 Division Board and Committee Chairs for their purposeful leadership and their valuable contributions to the Division. I look forward to continuing to work with you all. To our members, in the coming year, I commit to you to focus my energy and that of the talented, hard-working and dedicated Board and Committee/Task Force chairs on issues important to you, your practice, and the profession which we know impacts the lives of others in significant ways. I’m thrilled to be your President. I have a lot I want to cram into one year, and with your help, we can tackle some difficult issues successfully. I want you to be thrilled too!

I also want you to be informed and involved, so I will communicate regularly with you throughout this year via the IP and broadcast e-mails. I hope you will communicate your ideas and thoughts with me as well. You can reach me at JNMPSY@cs.com or at my office 562-596-7719.

Here’s one of the first things ahead. Your Executive Committee of the Board is meeting the evening of January 10th, the full Board is meeting all day on January 11th, and we will meet jointly with the Board of Division 29 on Sunday morning. We will welcome several newly elected and appointed leaders at these meetings, conduct the business of the division, and continue to plan our direction for the future. On Saturday, we will be working creatively in focus groups on at least two key areas: 1). Developing a practice advocacy agenda, identifying key issues important to practice, and formulating proposals to address needs which will be presented to APA. We will be collaborating with our Division 29 colleagues in this focus group. 2). Reviewing how best to use our resources both financial and otherwise to further a practice agenda and meet the needs of our members and other independent practitioners.

To whet your appetite about what else is ahead, I want to introduce you to some of my appointees and the important roles they will play in the coming year so that you can be familiar with who is working for you in addition to the Board and elected leaders. More introductions will occur later. Currently, there are three task forces:

• Health Care for the Whole Person, chaired by Esther Lerman Freeman, which is a continuation of an initiative by Immediate Past President Laura Barbanel. This task force focuses on providing members with specific strategies for building, maintaining, and benefiting from collaborative relationships, particularly with other professionals in health care professions.

• Tools for Independent Practitioner Success (TIPS), chaired by Jeff Zimmerman. TIPS is a new task force this year which will provide members with resources on business practice issues such as billing, practice transition issues, insurance/retirement planning, lease/building ownership guidelines, etc.

• Development and Implementation of an Interdivisional Practice Summit, chaired by Carol Goodheart. Congruent with my hope to develop a meaningful practice agenda with realistic, move-ahead plans, this task force will work on identifying key practice issues and effective ways to address them to culminate in a Practice Summit.

Before I lose you in this long message, let me remind you of our theme for Convention: “Profiting from Partnerships”. Convention Program Chair Diane Siegel, our wonderful Jeannie Beaff, and the program committee have worked hard and have received wonderful proposals which highlight successful partnerships for practice. I’ll share more on the specific topics when proposals are accepted. Before I leave the topic of partnerships, though, keep on the look out for a great collaborative relationship I’ve been working on for a while which I believe will benefit us greatly. I’m waiting for the “ink” to dry on the agreement, so stay tuned!

Finally, there are many important issues facing independent practice and our profession. While we may not always agree on the priority and mechanism of how to deal with those issues, I’m hopeful we will remember to be open to, seek to understand, and offer constructive criticism of each other’s well-intentioned efforts. Perhaps then we can listen less defensively, act more proactively, and accomplish more tasks.

It’s going to be a great year at Division 42. There’ll be hard work, enticing challenges, difficult decisions, new opportunities, profitable partnerships, and helpful information. What a thrill!

Jana N. Martin, President
Division 42