We are pleased to announce Diane Alberson, MEd; and Caitlyn Kennan, MSS, LSSGB, will be stepping into the roles as co-chairs following the Alliance Annual Conference in 2022.
Diane Alberson, MEd, CAE, director of education development at the American Association of Endocrinology, has over 20 years of experience in continuing medical education focused on multi-professional clinicians and Boards. Her experience ranges from the development of large annual meetings, online and virtual courses as well as the implementation of a certification skills course at national associations including the Society of Critical Care Medicine, American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and the Alzheimer’s Association. She has worked with ACCME, ACPE, California Board of Nurses, AARC, as well as the ABIM, ABA, ABS, ABP and BCCCP regulatory Boards for maintenance of certification. Diane has been involved in many strategic initiatives and has also served as the 2012–2013 president of the Illinois Alliance for Continuing Medical Education. She continues to develop and enhance activities to advance continuing medical education.
Caitlyn Keenan, MS, LSSGB, the accreditation manager at AMDA — the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, joined the continuing education in health professions community in 2017. Her passion for standardization, efficiency and problem-solving fuels her development of Standard Operating Procedures and policies based on creative solutions and interdepartmental collaboration. She approaches accredited education as a puzzle to solve made up of appropriate industry support, meaningful and impactful education and outcomes measurement. She’s also an avid crafter, sewer and knitter who spends far too much money on crafting supplies to create masterpieces with her daughter.
To help with succession planning, Brian and I meet with Diane and Caitlyn monthly to layout our topics for our Casual Conversations Series and work with us on critical topics that affect our section. In March 2021, we began discussing the possibility of changing the name of our section to ensure that we are inclusive of membership organizations that may not be “Medical” Specialty Societies but whose staff do not have a current “home” within the Alliance. Specifically, we looked at ensuring our name welcomed members who were part of nursing and pharmacy associations and staff members of groups like the AMA. With this in mind, we met with our board liaison and received the green light from the board to ask our members through a survey if we should change our name and, if so, what the name should be. After much consideration we are happy to announce that the new name of the MSS section will be the:
Healthcare Professionals Membership Societies Section (HPMSS)
In the spirit of being inclusive, Brian, Diane, Caitlyn and I want to reach out and encourage any Alliance member who may not have felt an exact fit with our section’s previous name, to consider joining our section. The Alliance website has already been updated to reflect this change and we are working with the Alliance staff to update our email address. In the meantime, please feel free to reach us directly if you have any questions at lcohen@vascularsociety.org or bthompson@aapmr.org.
Lisa F. Cohen, CHCP; and Brian Thompson, MBA, FACEHP, are the co-chairs of the Healthcare Professionals Membership Societies Section (formerly known as the Medical Specialty Societies Section).