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 1-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 6 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.