Greetings,
We’ve already had our first Board Conference Call – and started the ball rolling. The 2011 Conference Committee – headed by Catherine Ayers and Ellen Peterson is also underway with a very dynamic committee.
This year we are trying something new and have contracted with CVENT, which is a professional event management company to help us streamline our communications and event registration. Toward that end, we would like to ask all of the California State Chapters to please forward your e-mail contact list to Ellen Peterson. We know there are contacts that are not necessarily on the CSAOHN membership list that we want to include in our invitations to events. This list will be kept confidential. I’ll be calling and asking our representatives and Chapter presidents for this as well. It’s our hope that this event planning service can eventually help all of us with communicating and CE events.
Our Governmental Affairs director, Pam Dannenberg, has been diligently working hot issues of us on a California State Level. Because of her efforts and partnering in this maze of legislation with WOEMA, CSAOHN has been asked to participate on the Cal/OSHA lead standard advisory committee. This is a standard that is almost 40 years old and in dire need of updating.
I was reading the article from Nurse.com:http://news.nurse.com/article/20110124/NATIONAL01/101240027/-1/frontpage
The author interviewed Rose Gonzalez, RN, MPS, who is the director of government affairs for the American Nurses Association. She shares Pam’s dedication:
No matter how nurses choose to get politically involved, it’s important that they focus on concerns they share, rather than their differences, Gonzalez says. “If we could get 3.1 million nurses to agree on one major issue, it would get done very quickly.”
Nagelsmith agrees. “Just the sheer numbers of nurses and the public’s perception of the work that we do are huge drivers of how politically powerful we could be.”
Thank you to Pam, Mary Gene Ryan, Mary Hale and anyone else who has helped unravel, understand, and respond to legislative issues.
We are very lucky to have an involved, fun group…but, we’re California after all!
Take care,
Julie
- Next CSAOHN Board Conference call: February 25, 12:00 noon
- Next Gov. Affairs Conference call, March 18 and 19 at 8:30am
- News letter items due to Gail King by February 18, 2011
