Over the past year our journal has continued to flourish. Submissions continue to increase in number and quality and, just as importantly, show an ever increasing professional and geographic diversity. These accomplishments are reflected in a significantly increased impact factor for Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness (DMPHP) journal. Now, the next step is to focus on increasing both individual and institutional subscriptions to better sustain the arc we are on. On the institutional side, we will work through our publisher, Cambridge University Press, and all of you, our current subscribers and readers, to make a conscious effort to recommend DMPHP to those institutions you are a part of or have contact with. On the individual subscription side, the main channel will be through the Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health (SDMPH).
Unlike the journal, the society continues to struggle in its attempts to create the infrastructure required to grow and prosper. There are, of course, multiple factors that account for societal difficulties but I believe two in particular are most telling. First, there has been a growth in preparedness and response associations and societies, groups, and subcommittees within existing organizations. Most of these entities suffer the same problems as SDMPH and we, as an organization, will make every attempt to meaningful coalesce these groups into an entity that can better achieve all of our goals. That will require the surrendering of some autonomy but the rewards of achieving critical mass in order to influence policy and programs to better guarantee Global Health Security will more than offset this.
Second, and probably more importantly, health professionals today are not the “joiners” societies have counted on and enjoyed historically, and when individuals do join it is to a group directly representative of their profession or discipline—and this is how it should be. That is why we will be restructuring our membership to better reflect the world out there today. We will continue to offer membership in SDMPH as representing a secondary discipline that complements the member’s primary discipline and is no way meant to compete with it.
In order to enhance SDMPH membership we will offer two levels, a full membership and an associate membership. Full membership will have voting privileges and the opportunity and mechanism to advance from basic membership through Fellow based on academic and experiential accomplishments. The fee for full membership, which will include an electronic subscription to the journal, will be set at $200 per year, which we hope will not be too high so as to create an economic deterrent.
In addition, we will have an associate membership that is aimed at individuals who are interested in preparedness and response but who do not want to be involved in the day-to-day activities of the society. This will be a nonvoting membership but will come with an electronic subscription to DMPHP and is offered at a rate of $100 per annum. This is primarily meant to give individuals who want to support our work an opportunity to do so and at the same time receive the valuable information in our journal. Given the nonprofit status of SDMPH, we hope for this to become an attractive means for all individuals to do their part.
Of course, for all of this to be successful, we need your continual commitment and support. Our “marketing” has to rely on you, our members and readers, in helping us to spread the information and opportunity to all of those with an interest in Global Health Security.
Your support in the past has allowed us to have three exceptional Annual Meetings and enabled us to commit to our 4th Annual Meeting, the details of which will be forthcoming.
