Today marks the one year anniversary since our new organization, the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH), launched. Let us take a moment to reflect on our accomplishments over the past year:

• We continue to strive to be “Better Together”. Our membership has grown to 94 member schools and programs. We have continued to focus our strategies to advance education, research and the practice of public health. The significance of the phrase, Better Together, continues to guide all that ASPPH does for our members.
• We are very pleased to have a new aspph.org. We have reimagined the content, design and overall experience to better serve today’s public health students, educators, and practitioners. We hope to better demonstrate the value of public health education and CEPH-accreditation through highly visual storytelling, compelling resources, ongoing knowledge sharing, and utility content and tools. We hope you will find the new aspph.org to be a valuable resource that empowers visitors to engage with the public health field.
• ASPPH began its ASPPH Presents monthly webinar series in the spring of 2014. Featured topics included “Policy and Advocacy in Support of Academic Public Health Education, Research, and Practice”; “NIH Strategic Plan for Disease Prevention: Planning for the Next Five Years”; and “Diversity as a Vital Component of Health Systems Change”. The series will reconvene this September. Topics to be covered this fall include global issues, diversity, and recruitment, among others. Each webinar, sponsored by different ASPPH committees, is designed as a service to CEPH-accredited ASPPH member schools and programs. Up to date information regarding upcoming webinars will be featured on the ASPPH Events page.
• ASPPH hosted the first annual “This Is Public Health Student Recruitment Fair” on April 29 in San Diego. ASPPH hosted the second annual “This Is Public Health Student Recruitment Fair” on Tuesday, July 15, at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health in Washington, DC. Due to the success of the previous two fairs, ASPPH has four planned for the fall.
• An exciting and major change for ASPPH is that we will no longer be holding our annual meeting in conjunction with the APHA annual meeting. Instead, we will hold the first stand-alone ASPPH annual meeting March 22-25, 2015 in Arlington, VA. The new ASPPH Annual Meeting will bring together individuals from across our member schools and programs, as well as colleagues from non-member programs of public health and others who are interested in engaging in discussions and sharing or perspectives.  Learn more.

What a wonderful and exciting year this has been! A big thank you to all of our members, we could not do this without you!