APHA 2020: Virtual meeting provides vital connections for workforce – About 9,400 public health professionals come together for APHA Annual Meeting ===================================================================================================================================================== * Kim Krisberg ![Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/50/10/1.1/F1.medium.gif) [Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/50/10/1.1/F1) APHA 2020 participants heard from a range of leaders, including, from left, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization; Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., House speaker; and public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson. Photos by The Nation’s Health Officially, violence prevention, racial equity and COVID-19 took center stage at APHA’s 2020 Annual Meeting and Expo, which welcomed about 9,400 public health professionals, advocates and students. But a current of connection was also coursing through the meeting, providing an anchor of support for workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. After months of work by APHA staff, leaders and volunteers to pivot one of the world’s largest gatherings of public health professionals to an all-virtual format, APHA 2020 kicked off in October. The meeting hosted powerful calls to action on violence and racial inequity, with five days of immersive discussions on new public health science and practice, as well as interactive opportunities to meet, share and organize with colleagues from across the world. Attendees chose from hundreds of scientific sessions, engaged in Q&As with researchers and fellow practitioners, earned continuing education credits and browsed virtual booths at the Public Health Expo. They also celebrated outstanding achievements in public health, heard from renowned leaders in the field, and, importantly, engaged with one another. “It’s been a really hard year for people in public health,” said Lisa Carlson, MPH, MCHES, APHA’s immediate past president and an administrator at Emory University School of Medicine. “If there was ever a time people needed to come together and recharge from the energy of their APHA colleagues, this was it...I think that was one of the real victories of this meeting.” Many attendees praised the much-needed opportunity to connect with fellow public health professionals who understand what they have been experiencing. U.S. public health workers have been enduring tremendous stress during the pandemic, facing long hours, a lack of federal support, misinformation, mistrust and even harassment and physical threats. They have also had to deal with fears about their own health and of their families: As of mid-November, almost 1,400 U.S. health care workers had died from COVID-19 connected with their jobs, including doctors, nurses, EMTS, social workers and pharmacists. ![Figure2](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/50/10/1.1/F2.medium.gif) [Figure2](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/50/10/1.1/F2) During APHA 2020 featured sessions, attendees heard from speakers that included, from left, NPR social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam; PolicyLink CEO Angela Glover Blackwell, JD; and Harvard University professor David Williams. Photos by The Nation’s Health During APHA’s Public Health Awards Ceremony, where he was honored with APHA’s Presidential Citation, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, praised public health professionals for their work “during this grueling COVID-19 pandemic.” “Individually and collectively, your contributions are simply extraordinary,” Fauci said. “Thank you for discipline, from tobacco control and water quality to climate change and police violence. And with the new virtual format, APHA 2020 registrants have access to meeting recordings through August. Longtime APHA member Kathy Lituri, MPH, RDH, a past chair of the Association’s Oral Health Section, said she is looking forward to exploring the meeting’s hundreds of recorded sessions at her own pace, especially the poster presentations. “There’s just no way to catch it all and explore everything you want to when you’re there in person,” said Lituri, director of Oral Health Promotion at Boston University. “Now, I feel like a kid in a candy store with all these options.” During APHA 2020’s Oct. 25 opening general session, APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin, MD, called on attendees to lean on public health’s history while facing down today’s substantial — and often overwhelming — challenges. He and fellow opening speakers also zeroed in on social determinants that underlie a person’s risk of violence and poor health, particularly calling out the role of systemic racism. “Now we have the challenges of police violence, food insecurity, homelessness and environmental and racial injustice,” Benjamin said. “The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic continues unabated...disproportionately (impacting) communities of color. And then there is racism, our nation’s original sin. We do, indeed, have work to do. And we have to do it under the most difficult conditions. But I want to assure you that we’ve been here before, and we have persevered.” On preventing violence, opening session speaker Shankar Vedantam, social science correspondent with NPR and host of the podcast and radio show “Hidden Brain,” said most people still see violence as a legal issue rather than a public health one. That is a problem, he said, because public health is both a powerful way to understand violence and to confront it. ![Figure3](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/50/10/1.1/F3.medium.gif) [Figure3](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/50/10/1.1/F3) Speakers at APHA 2020’s closing session on Oct. 28 discuss ways to move forward from hate and violence. Clockwise from top left are APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin, Margaret Huang, Patrice Harris and Aqueela Sherrills. Photos by The Nation’s Health Opening speaker Bryan Stevenson, JD, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama, took attendees through the history of mass incarceration in the U.S. and its legacy of harm and trauma in Black communities. The fact that 1 in 3 boys who are Black can expect to spend some time in prison, he said, should be considered a public health crisis. “We need an era of truth and justice,” said Stevenson, a public interest lawyer. “We are all made ill by our failure to confront the pollution of bigotry that is all around us.” He called on attendees to take four steps toward achieving equity and justice: get closer to people who are vulnerable and those suffering, incarcerated and marginalized; change the narrative; be willing to do uncomfortable things; and stay hopeful. Ultimately, Stevenson said the health of communities must not be judged on how well the powerful and privileged are doing, but by the health and well-being of the most vulnerable and marginalized. Policy-mediated violence and systemic racism was the topic of discussion at the Annual Meeting’s Monday general session, which featured a wide-ranging conversation with leading researchers and advocates. “We have to come to grips with the reality that the inequities we see, the racism we see, do not reflect a broken system,” said speaker David Williams, PhD, MPH, a professor of public health and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Instead, they reflect a carefully crafted system functioning as planned, successfully implementing social policies, many of which are rooted in racism. They are not accidents.” While attention to police killings of Black Americans has increased in 2020, people need to also acknowledge the everyday policies that harm people, said presenter Anthony Iton, MD, JD, MPH, senior vice president of healthy communities at the California Endowment. The damaging effects that a purposeful lack of policy can create has been evident during the pandemic, with the country’s growing number of deaths and infections. > “We need an era of truth and justice. We are all made ill by our failure to confront the pollution of bigotry that is all around us.” > > — Bryan Stevenson “COVID-19 has moved like a heat-seeking missile into Black and brown bodies throughout this country,” he said. “We live in a society that manufactures social vulnerability. We put people in harm’s way routinely, and then we act surprised when they get harmed.” The effects of policy-mediated violence are often reflected in the nation’s children, said speaker Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, MPH, a pediatrician who helped expose the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. During Monday’s session, Hanna-Attisha was honored with the CDC Foundation’s 2020 Fries Prize for Improving Health. “It’s too often in the bodies of our children, and in their blunted potential, that we witness a failure of policies to respect science, to promote public health and to eliminate inequities,” Hanna-Attisha said. A panel discussion on combating hate and violence capped off the virtual meeting’s closing general session on Oct. 28, where Margaret Huang, MIA, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, reported that levels of activity among extremist groups are at their worst in decades. “Extremist ideology and acts of hate are nothing new, but we have certainly seen a rise in extremist activity and more open expressions of hateful ideology in the last four years,” she said. Conversations and strategies to address violence and hate must take place in partnership with communities, said psychiatrist Patrice Harris, MD, MA, immediate past president of the American Medical Association. Organizations cannot work in communities without working with people who live there, she said, noting that such groups must also commit the resources for change, not just issue statements. Harris highlighted three steps critical to such work: “It will be about truth telling. It will be about healing and that process, and then we can get to transformation.” ![Figure4](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/50/10/1.1/F4.medium.gif) [Figure4](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/50/10/1.1/F4) APHA 2020 session headliners included, from left, racism researcher Chandra Ford, PhD; then-APHA President Lisa Carlson; and the California Endowment’s Anthony Iton. Photos by The Nation’s Health APHA 2020 attendees can watch hundreds of recorded sessions — including the opening, Monday and closing general sessions — online now. For people who did not attend the meeting, the APHA Now program offers video recordings of 14 Annual Meeting sessions, including the main featured sessions, as well as the opportunity to earn continuing education credits. ## Attendees engage, interact online Overall, APHA’s first all-virtual meeting featured more than 1,250 events, including 1,000 scientific sessions and 315 organizations showcasing public health resources, education and research at the Public Health Expo. APHA 2020 also included 76 sessions dedicated to public health’s work to respond to COVID-19. More than 2,000 attendees earned continuing education credits, and hundreds of people attended APHA’s Learning Institutes. ![Figure5](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/50/10/1.1/F5.medium.gif) [Figure5](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/50/10/1.1/F5) Violence takes a heavy toll on children, said pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha during APHA’s Annual Meeting. Photo by The Nation’s Health “I’m so glad I can go back now and watch more of the presentations,” said Emily Bartlett, MPH, MS, RN, immediate past chair of APHA’s Student Assembly and a doctorate student at the Columbia University School of Nursing. “It’s a really great experience, because you don’t feel like you missed out on anything.” Beyond the science, meeting attendees also took time out to reconnect, celebrate colleagues, and meet new ones. Even the annual APHA Dance Party went virtual, with many party-goers dressing up in anticipation of Halloween. The third Annual Meeting Sunset Tweetup on Oct. 27 welcomed guests for a virtual public health chat, and throughout the five-day meeting, Annual Meeting attendees generated more than 13,000 tweets using the #APHA2020 hashtag. For those needing help in that arena, this year’s Social Media Lab, offered in partnership with John Snow Inc., hosted more than 770 one-on-one and short sessions. Attendees also took advantage of Geeks Meet events, which hosted conversations on pressing public health topics, from climate change to COVID-19. ![Figure6](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/50/10/1.1/F6.medium.gif) [Figure6](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/50/10/1.1/F6) José Ramón Fernández-Peña, MD, MPA, took office as APHA president in October. Photo by The Nation’s Health The APHA Annual Meeting Blog — at [www.public](http://www.public) [healthnewswire.org](http://healthnewswire.org) — published nearly 50 posts from APHA 2020, while APHA TV broadcast daily news updates and original interviews with public health leaders. The episodes can be viewed on APHA’s YouTube channel. “One of the hallmarks of the APHA Annual Meeting is that re-energizing feeling from being with so many people from across the country who are going through similar situations,” Bartlett said. “And I’m so glad that transferred over.” Planning has already begun for APHA’s 2021 Annual Meeting and Expo, which will be held Oct. 23-27 under a theme of “Creating the Healthiest Nation: Strengthening Social Connectedness.” Abstract submissions for APHA 2021 open Jan. 4. For more information on APHA 2020, including access to session recordings, visit [www.apha.org/annualmeeting](http://www.apha.org/annualmeeting). *Melanie Padgett Powers contributed to this story, portions of which were published on APHA’s Annual Meeting Blog.* * Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association