American Public Health Association
2024 Annual Meeting & Expo
Minneapolis, MN
October 27-30, 2024

Believe it or not: critical trust building, trust busting & creating trustworthy public health science and practice

Abstracts due March 29, 2024
https://apha.confex.com/apha/2024/spt1848.htm

The official theme for APHA 2024 is: “Rebuilding Trust in Public Health and Science”.
We in the Spirit of 1848 take the next step and call for:
Believe it or not: critical trust building, trust busting & creating trustworthy public health science and practice
-- a task core to the mission of the Spirit of 1848 Caucus, for which we will be honoring our 30th anniversary, since we launched the Spirit of 1848 in 1994!

We also recognize the meeting will be taking place in Minneapolis, MN, where George Floyd was horrifically murdered by the police on May 25, 2020,
and also 1 week before the US presidential & other elections (Nov 5, 2024).

• Motivating our theme is deep recognition that:
  
  (a) trustworthiness is earned - it is not a given;
  
  (b) public health and science more broadly are not monoliths: within these fields are those who have inspired us with their tireless work to advance critical ideas, research and practices integral to advancing health justice, while others have done the converse (as exemplified by past & present realities of scientific racism, eugenics, and more);
  
  (c) attacks on public health, science, and educational systems more broadly, while decades-old, are escalating, led by neo-liberal & right-wing groups variously committed to market fundamentalism, right-wing libertarianism, & naturalizing social inequality, who are opposed to public health and other government regulations that promote healthy, equitable, and sustainable societies, and whose disinformation campaigns, fueled by the scale, speed and scope of the internet & social media, are seeking to destroy, via Big Lie tactics, any sense of a shared reality in which evidence & public health matter; and
  
  (d) public health advocates and many others have displayed enormous resilience, creativity, and solidarity in not only countering these attacks but also bolstering critical analysis and action for building earned trust with communities and fostering inspiring, equitable, sustainable, joyful, and dignified futures for all.
  

Below we provide: (1) the specific instructions for each session, and (2) the APHA instructions about preparing abstracts, with regard to word limits, membership & registration requirements, and information required to enable the session in which a presentation is included to qualify for continuing education credits.

Title: “Critical science vs. science denialism: building trustworthy public data for health justice”

NOTE: presentations for this session will be drawn primarily from abstracts submitted in response to the OPEN CALL for abstracts supplemented by solicited abstracts as warranted.

CALL: This session and its speakers (via both an open call & invited) will focus on conceptual and empirical investigations into the historical and contemporary struggles to develop trustworthy public health data for health justice, calling for critical science while challenging science denialism. Presentations could include a focus on the relationship between public health data and: (1) historical and contemporary resistance to fascism, (2) resistance to eugenics and racism, (3) science denialism (e.g., climate change, vaccine), the current complex alchemies brewing under the banner of "don't trust authorities," from ultra-left to fascist, mixed with counterculture/wellness and libertarian/anti-regulation zealots and (4) data sources, gaps, and ownership, including contrasting publicly collected data, community-sourced data, and private data.

4) INTEGRATIVE SESSION (Tues, Oct 29, 2024 10:30am -- 12 noon -- invited speakers:

Title: "Science, causal inference & the people’s health: implications for trustworthy public health research, practice, and activism for health justice "

CALL: This session and its invited speakers will focus on critical science, causal inference & the people’s health. Topics to be considered will include: who and what can make science either trustworthy or not trustworthy, under what conditions, and in relation to what approaches to investigating and inferring causation; what the relationships are between scientific integrity and the production of both scientific knowledge and ignorance, including in relation to scientific racism; and who benefits from and who is harmed by attacks on public health science and regulations and policies based on trustworthy science. The format will be a featured speaker, followed by 3 discussants reflecting on these issues in relation to the 3 foci of the Spirit of 1848 Caucus – the social history of public health, the politics of public health data, and progressive pedagogy – and implications for public health research, teaching, practice, and activism for the people’s health & health justice.

5) STUDENT POSTER SESSION: SOCIAL JUSTICE & PUBLIC HEALTH (Tues, Nov 14, 2023, 1:00 - 2:00pm) -- open call for abstracts:

For the APHA Annual Meeting 2024, the Spirit of 1848 Social Justice & Public Health Student Poster Session is issuing an OPEN CALL FOR ABSTRACTS for posters that highlight the intersections between social justice and public health from a historical, theoretical, epidemiological, ethnographic, and/or methodological perspective.

This session will have an OPEN CALL for submissions by students (undergraduate or graduate) that are focused on work linking issues of social justice and public health. This can include, but is not limited to, work concerned with the Spirit of 1848’s focus for APHA 2024 on “Believe it or not: critical trust building, trust busting & creating trustworthy public health science and practice.”

Per our Spirit of 1848 policy, we encourage submissions that bring a critical Indigenous lens, drawing on Indigenous theories, knowledge, and methods, to the specific topic that is the focus of this session, i.e., student posters on links between social justice & public health.

The submitted work can address one or more of many interlocking types of justice (e.g., racial, Indigenous, political and/or economic, gender and/or sexuality-related, environmental, restorative, etc.) We are interested in submissions not only from students in schools of public health and other health professions (e.g., nursing, medicine) but also from students in schools & programs focused on law, political science, public policy, social work, government, economics, sociology, urban planning, etc. For examples of abstracts selected in prior years, see our annual reportbacks.

Instructions for abstract submission can be found at the APHA abstract submission website.

Abstracts will be evaluated on the following criteria:

(1) Relevant to the Sprit of 1848’s broader mission and theme (Spirit of 1848’s theme for APHA 2023 is “Believe it or not: critical trust building, trust busting & creating trustworthy public health science and practice”);

(2) The rigor of the research methods and theoretical foundation;

(3) Originality; and

(4) Scholarly or practical importance

NOTE: to address the on-going problem of student uncertainty about funding, which has led to students with accepted posters withdrawing their submissions, we will continue with the successful approach we implemented in 2016, whereby we will: (1) accept the top 10 abstracts (the limit for any poster session); (2) set up a waitlist of all runner-up potentially acceptable posters (ranked in order of preference); and (3) reject abstracts that either are not focused on issues of social justice and public health or are not of acceptable quality. If any accepted poster is withdrawn, we will replace it with a poster from the waitlist (in rank order).

For any questions about this session, please contact Spirit of 1848 Student Poster Coordinating Committee member Charlene Kuo.

6) PROGRESSIVE PEDAGOGY SESSION (Tues, Oct 29, 2024, 2:30 - 4:00pm) -- Open call for abstracts:

Title: "Teaching to counter miseducation and build critical pedagogy"

CALL: We seek abstracts for presentations exploring trustworthiness and trust as it relates to public health pedagogy. The focus of the presentation may include processes in teaching to counter miseducation and build critical education, strategies to build community trust in research and science, radical initiatives within and outside educational institutions, progressive efforts to strengthen trust within the public health workforce, and issues of academic freedom & free speech. We invite presentations focusing on how pedagogy can be carried out by community activists, public health practitioners, and academic instructors (K-post graduate).

APHA Reminders re: Abstract Requirements & Continuing Education Credits:

NOTE: it is important that our Spirit of 1848 sessions be approved for CE credits, so that public health & clinical professionals can get CE credits in sessions focused on the links between social justice & public health! – so please be sure to read these instructions carefully!!!

1. APHA ABSTRACT REQUIREMENTS:

• Abstracts should be no more than 250 words
• All presenters must be Individual members of APHA in order to present.
• All presenters must register for the meeting.
• Abstracts cannot be presented or published in any journal prior to the APHA Annual Meeting.

2. CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS
APHA values the ability to provide continuing education credit to physicians, nurses, health educators and those certified in public health at its annual meeting. Please complete all required information when submitting an abstract so members can claim credit for attending your session. These credits are necessary for members to keep their licenses and credentials.

For a session to be eligible for Continuing Education Credit, each presenter, panelist, discussant, and/or faculty must provide:

• An abstract free of trade and/or commercial product names (and this includes the names of any books you have published!);

• At least one MEASURABLE outcome (DO NOT USE "To understand” or “To learn” as objectives, they are not measurable).

o Examples of Acceptable Measurable Action Words:
Explain, Demonstrate, Analyze, Formulate, Discuss, Compare, Differentiate, Describe, Name, Assess, Evaluate, Identify, Design, Define or List.

• A signed Conflict of Interest (Disclosure) form with a relevant qualification Statement. See an example of an acceptable Qualification Statement on the online Disclosure form.

o Examples of Acceptable Biographical Qualification Statement:
• “I have been the principal or co-principal of multiple federally funded grants focusing on the epidemiology of drug abuse, HIV prevention and co-occurring mental and drug use disorders. Among my scientific interests has been the development of strategies for preventing HIV and STDs in out-of-treatment drug users.”

• “I am qualified because I have conducted research in the area of maternal and child health for the past 20 years and have given multiple presentations on this subject.”

Please note that "I am the Principle Investigator of this study" is NOT an acceptable qualification statement. Nor it is acceptable to state: “I am qualified because I am a professor at XYZ University.”

Contact Mighty Fine if you have any questions concerning continuing education. Please contact the program planner for all other questions.

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