2007 Communications Committee Report
During the past year, the Communications Committee held
three conference calls, and met twice, once in March and once at the EB
meeting in April. The Committee plans to continue this pattern of quarterly
conference call meetings, plus our annual meeting at EB.
The March meeting was a 1½ -day strategy meeting in
Bethesda. This meeting was planned because of the installation of a new
Chair and a new Communications Director, and the appointment of several new
committee members. The meeting was intended to allow the committee to
discuss the communications program from a more strategic perspective, rather
than within the constraints of an ordinary “business” meeting. It was also
hoped that the meeting would provide an element of “team building” among
this mostly new collection of individuals.
The Committee helped develop a concept for a Podcasting
program and worked out the broad strokes of the committee’s new statement of
purpose.
Communications Symposium at EB-07
The Communications Symposium at EB-07 was entitled,
“Making the Case for Federally Funded Research: Communicating with
Congress.” The goal of the symposium was to provide strategies and tips on
how to approach members of Congress with regard to federal funding and other
legislative issues that might impact biomedical research. In order to make
federal research funding a national priority again, it is critical that
scientists around the country convince their elected representatives that
biomedical research is a sound and worthwhile national investment. To do so,
researchers need the tools to effectively communicate the importance of
science to Members of Congress and other audiences. This also requires a
special appreciation of how to discuss federal funding priorities on Capitol
Hill. This symposium was designed to explore ways to communicate about
science, work with Congressional staff, develop ongoing relationships with
lawmakers and effectively convey both the local and national importance of
federally funded biomedical research.
The speakers were Jon Retzlaff, Director of Legislative
Affairs for FASEB; William T. Talman, Professor of Neurology and
Neuroscience at the Univ. of Iowa, Chief of Neurology at the Iowa City
Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and past chairman of the APS Public Affairs
Committee; Sarah England, Associate Professor of Molecular Physiology
and Biophysics at the Univ. of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, and a former
Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow who worked in the office of Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Stacie Propst, Director of Government
Relations for Research!America. The Communications Committee symposium was a
success, drawing a crowd of about 50 people.
Communications Office Activities in 2005-2006
There were a total of 66 scientific releases during the
report period: 30 journal releases, 17 releases from EB, and 19 conference
releases. This averages to slightly more than five releases per month, which
was the goal set for the year. There were an additional 12 releases related
to awards and APS activities, yielding a total of 78 releases for the year,
or about 6½ per month.
Journal Release Program
The Communications Office produced 30 press releases
based on scientific papers appearing in nine APS journals. This slightly
exceeds last year’s journal press release record, despite the three-month
vacancy in the Communications Office staffing. This steady output of two to
three papers per month is greatly facilitated by input from Journal Editors
and Associate Editors, as well as in house APS Journal supervisors and copy
editors.
Conference Releases
The Communications Office carried out general media
relations for two conferences this past year: “Comparative Physiology 2006:
Integrating Diversity,” (Virginia Beach, October 2006) and “Physiological
Genomics and Proteomics of Lung Diseases,” (Ft. Lauderdale, November 2006)
and Experimental Biology 2007 (Washington, April-May 2007). There were 12
releases related to the Comparative Physiology conference and 7 to
the Lung Disease conference.
The Communications Office developed 17 press releases
for EB 2007. These received an unprecedented extent of media coverage.
There were 261 TV hits from these releases, including coverage in each of
the 10 top US markets. Releases were also picked up by major non-TV
outlets, such as CBS Network Radio, BBC Radio (UK), NPR, Forbes.com, UPI,
Reuters, MSNBC.com, Scientific American, the Wall Street Journal,
the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and the Austin American
Statesman
Society Releases
APS makes a special effort to publicize its award
programs, the individual award winners and their institutions. This past
year included about a dozen releases concerning awards and honors, public
affairs, and educational programs.
APS Press Room
The APS Press Room on the
APS Web site is an accessible site that serves both the media and the
general public’s interest in physiology. This page (http://www.the-aps.org/press/pitn/index.htm)
contains active links to the various media sites picking up our press
releases.
Traffic to the APS Press
Room is measured on an ongoing basis. Traffic on this site, which includes
the general public physiologyinfo.org site, shows considerable
month-to-month variability, but the overall trend seems to indicate
increasing traffic.
Timeline of Physiology – Endocrinology and
Metabolism
Accepting an earlier “challenge” to all APS Sections
from the Committee, the Endocrinology and Metabolism Section completed the
first sectional timeline under the direction of Charles Lang of Penn State.
It has been posted on the APS website:
http://www.the-aps.org/press/endotime/index.htm. This spring, it was
also released in poster format. Other sections have been encouraged to
develop Section Timelines for their specific disciplines.
APS-AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering
Fellowship: 2005 & 2006 Fellows
The Committee oversees selection of an APS-sponsored
AAAS Mass Media fellow each year, which encourages an informed exchange
between science and journalism. The 2006 Fellow, Erin Cline, received her
PhD from Stanford University. She spent eight weeks at the Los Angeles
Times working with science editor Ashley Dunn. Cline wrote an article
for the February 2007 issue of The Physiologist describing her
experience as a reporter.
The 2007 Fellow is Katherine Leitzell, who is a PhD
student at the Univ. of Southern California. Her dissertation project is
focused on the regulation of intracellular trafficking of GABA transporters
in neurons. Leitzell is the ninth AAAS Fellow that APS will have
sponsored. Five of our previous Fellows have remained directly engaged in
science and research, whereas three have pursued a career in journalism or
communications. This record is comparable to the overall AAAS Mass Media
Fellowship program. The goal of the program is to increase the
communications awareness and skills of its Fellows, not necessarily to
produce journalists. The Committee feels that producing science journalists
with an understanding and appreciation of physiology and producing working
physiologists with a better appreciation and affinity for communicating
science to the general public are both worthy and useful outcomes.
Francis L. Belloni, Chair
Communications Committee
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Council approved a new statement of purpose for the Communications
Committee.
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Council approved the necessary funding to support a face-to-face
Committee meeting at the APS offices in fall 2007.
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Council authorized the necessary funding to provide support for a
Communications Symposium at the Experimental Biology Meetings on an
annual basis.
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Council approved the necessary funding to support one APS-sponsored AAAS
Mass Media Fellow for five years.
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