President's Message
The Future of FEHA: Providing a Roadmap
by Scott Turner MPA, RS
What a great week it was to be in Daytona Beach during FEHA’s 61st Annual Education Meeting (AEM)! I want to congratulate all Environmental Health professionals that received an award during our Awards Luncheon; FEHA awards represent the highest honor that may be given by the association to deserving members. I want to thank everyone that participated in the AEM and made it a valuable learning and networking experience for our attendees. Special thanks go to our exhibitors, sponsors, moderators, and presenters without which we would be unable to have a successful conference. I would like to recognize those that planned and organized this unparalleled educational opportunity: Melinda Collins, Tracy Wade, Bart Harriss, and Bridget Anderson. Outstanding job! We also have a “changing of the guard”, if you will, as we welcome Gale Tucker-Disney, Roberta Hammond, Jill Wallace, Lu Grimm, Bob Vincent, and Elke Ursin to their newly elected positions on our Board. I look forward to working with them and hope to have a very productive year.
Now that we have come to the conclusion of the 2009 AEM, we have a brief opportunity to breathe again. We have some time to think about what we did right and what we may want to improve upon in 2010. In her outgoing President’s Message, Melinda Collins wrote “…our incoming leaders – they are going to be in uncharted waters, while the forces that steer our profession continue to present us with unique and unexpected challenges.” How true! As incoming President, I am witnessing this first-hand. For me, this presents an opportunity to plan and to think past next year’s AEM and try to imagine what our efforts today may allow our organization to be three to five years in the future.
I am reminded of traveling. Whenever I want to plan a road trip, perhaps to take a vacation in North Carolina, I always consult MapQuest. I usually select the shortest, most efficient route from my home to my final destination. Once I’ve decided that the route is exactly the way I want it, I just print it out with a turn-by-turn set of directions and a colorful map to go with it. I double-check to see if I have enough money to get me to my destination, pack my bags with all the essentials, gas up the car, check the oil, and I’m ready to go! Does that process sound familiar to anyone?
I don’t think my road trip would be a very enjoyable experience if I failed to plan and prepare prior to departure. I think the same basic strategy should apply to running a large organization such as FEHA. It seems FEHA needs to determine the shortest, most efficient route from where we are today to wherever we want to be tomorrow. We need to provide a “roadmap” for FEHA and put down in writing how we will get to where we want to be. One method of accomplishing this is through the strategic planning process.
In the Winter 2008 issue of the Florida Journal of Environmental Health, Elke Ursin wrote a great article entitled “Working Toward a Strategic Plan.” Within her article were several charts to help the reader visualize FEHA’s prioritized Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) as determined by our ad hoc Strategic Planning Committee. This information, known as a SWOT analysis, is crucial in assessing our association’s current position. It tells us where we are starting from; we need to know this information if we want to build upon our strengths, shore up our weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities, and be aware and recognize any looming threats.
We are fortunate that Elke and the Strategic Planning Committee were able to collect this data and provide us the answer to the first question we had to ask ourselves “where are we now?” Many of you may already know, Elke has taken on her new role as Journal Editor, and she has stepped down from her position as chairperson over the Strategic Planning Committee. Sandra Whitehead will be taking over her position and Elke has agreed to stay on board as the vice-chair of this committee. I am excited to have Sandra working on this project because we are now ready to move on to the next stage of the planning process.
The next question we must ask is “where are we going?” The answer to this question is sometimes known as a Vision Statement. We review our mission statement which gives us our association’s purpose and focuses our goals and objectives. I wrote our mission out in my previous journal article, but it bears repeating:
Mission Statement
To enhance the professional integrity, knowledge, and working conditions of the environmental
health professional, as well as to promote the social and economic conditions of its members.
In addition to looking at our mission, we may take this time to look backward before we move forward. Elke has been reading all of our older journals to gather information about some of FEHA’s past accomplishments. From this, she hopes to determine what we have already done, and to see if there are trends in the issues that FEHA has faced over the years. What wisdom can be gleaned from this exercise will be included within our Strategic Plan.
The final question we must ask is “how will we get there?” There are a number of routes from our current position to reach our vision. Picking the right route will determine how quickly we get to our final destination. Through our Strategic Planning Committee, we will set our objectives, create our goals, develop our action plan, measure our successes, and make necessary adjustments along the way. I am committed to completing FEHA’s Strategic Plan (Roadmap) and embarking on the journey of implementing this plan that will move our organization forward into the future.
If there ever was a time to get involved with FEHA, this is the year to do it! I challenge each of you to be a part of the planning process, get your hands dirty as we implement our strategies, and become part of the solution. I encourage all FEHA members to get involved; become a part of our family of like-minded EH practitioners as we look ahead and tackle some of the on-coming issues facing our profession and our association. It’s our time to shine. Let’s get busy!