Div. 31 Endorsed APA Presidential Candidate Statements

Jessica Henderson Daniel, PhD, ABPP

Are you a member of the psychological association of your state, province, or territory?

YES. Massachusetts Psych Association 1985-present.

What offices or positions have you held in your SPTA, and when?

Member, Board of Directors 1994-1997; Co-Chair, New Psychologists Initiative 1995-1997; COR Representative 1997 and 1998-2004

Describe your activities and accomplishments at the local /SPTA level which have strengthened your SPTA.

Activities at the local /SPTA level—I co-chaired the New Psychologist Initiative, the first one in the country. The forerunner of the Early Career Program, it was a successful program with many activities including all-day information conferences and social events to facilitate networking to assist members to find employment.

I also worked with the ethnic minority group to recruit and retain a diverse membership. When I served as chair of the Board of Registration of Psychologists in the Massachusetts, at my request, I had quarterly meetings with the executive director of the MPA in order to maintain a positive relationship with the MPA. We were separate but not contentious or competitive.

Describe your activities on the national/APA level which have strengthened or benefited SPTAs.

I served on CAPP (Committee for the advancement of Professional Practice) for five years. During that time, I chaired the grants committee which was charged with reviewing SPTPA requests from financial support to maintain the organization to requests to enable prescriptive authority initiatives.

My term was the first year of Practice Directorate's diversity initiative with the Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs. I played a role in orienting the diversity delegates to the APA and Practice Directorate. I initiated the annual photo taken at the dinner as well as photographs of the delegates who were elected presidents of their respective organizations.

While on the APA Board of Directors, I served as chair of the centering on mentoring task force, which was instrumental in the proliferation of mentoring awards across APA and the SPTPAs. Mentoring provides relationships that can impact the recruitment and retention of members.

Also, I was the first senior member of the New Psychologist TF, the forerunner of the early career committee. This appointment was a consequence of my successful tenure as co-chair of the New Psychologist Program in the Massachusetts Psychological Association. The co-chair was one of my former post-doc fellows.

What do you perceive as being the issues of greatest concern to the SPTAs, as organizations?

Many of the SPTAs are facing financial challenges due to membership challenges. Limited financial resources can result in an inadequate lobby presence for the association at the state, provincial and territorial level. The decision makers must be kept aware of the unique training and skills that psychologists bring to the provision of mental health services.

What do you perceive as being issues of greatest concern to members of SPTAs?

The Affordable Care Act, shifting Medicare reimbursement rules and the encroachment of masters-educated practitioners into the territory where doctoral level psychologists one predominated, all pose significant threats.

If elected to the APA Presidency, what would you do to address these issues?

I will work with APAPO to take steps to protect professional practice and establish the value added by the doctoral level education in the mind of the public.

Other comments:

My prime initiative of “psychology: every day in every way” will emphasize enhancing the presence of psychological services and research in public life, I want to place psychologists prominently on corporate and community boards, elected public office (especially at the local level), in other highly visible public roles. We need to be seated at the table and often at the head of the table when decisions are made that affect people's health and welfare. Having served in such roles and having lobbied legislators or solicited corporate action, I know what can be accomplished. I want to get APA involved more directly in preparing our colleagues to step into these roles and place them there. Practitioners can play important roles in school boards, state insurance commissions, agency boards, corporate boards, and other such settings. I want APA more actively involved in helping this to happen.

Rodney L. Lowman, PhD

Are you a member of the psychological association of your state, province, or territory?

California Psychological Association, current; Texas Psychological Association, former member; and Louisiana Psychological Association, former member.

What offices or positions have you held in your SPTA, and when?

None. However, I was the founding president of the Dallas Ft. Worth Organizational Psychology Group, board member of the Houston Area Industrial-Organizational Psychology Group. Both were regional, not state associations. I served as chair of professional affairs for a major APA division and have published widely on professional practice issues throughout my career.

Describe your activities and accomplishments at the local/SPTA level which have strengthened your SPTA.

While living in Texas as a full-time practitioner (in clinical and consulting/I-O psychology) with my own firm I worked with the Texas Psychological Association and the legislature to get the legislature to revise a pernicious act that had been passed requiring all in the state who did career assessment and counseling to be licensed other a new business law that had been passed by the legislature without an exemption for licensed psychologists. We assembled a group from the Texas Psychological Association, affected psychologists, legislators, and other interested parties for a hearing in Houston on this work. With considerable effort the law was subsequently amended by act of the legislature. In California, I have been involved with the state licensure board concerning appropriate internship experiences from those seeking licensure who are in consulting and organizational psychology roles. I have also presented at some of the annual meetings of the Texas Psychological Association, the Louisiana Psychological Association, and the California Psychological Association.

Describe your activities on the national/APA level which have strengthened or benefited SPTAs.

As the elected inaugural chair of APA's new council leadership team, I attended all of the meetings of the APA Board which included meetings of the APAPO Board. It became clear to me that the strategic plan for the APAPO was not working with shrinking dollars being available to the APAPO from the practice assessment and the EdAT. I also was involved in raising issues of how to turnaround the current difficulties of the APAPO.

As member and chair of the board of professional affairs earlier in my career, I was involved in a number of issues related to the practice of professional psychology. I was actively involved in helping to create the record keeping guidelines and the guidelines on guidelines, as well as helping to promote the idea that the professional practice of psychology covers a wide range of activities and we need to be responsive to all of them.

I have also served as a strategic planning consultant to the ASPPB and have been involved in national/international (ASPPB) and state (California) licensing exam writing efforts.

What do you perceive as being the issues of greatest concern to SPTAs, as organizations?

The SPTAs play an important role in dealing with legislative issues that arise affecting the practice of psychology. These are often national issues often get played out (and must be addressed) at the local level. Examples include the definition of Medicare physician to include psychologists and the state-specific issues on coverage under Medicare and other federal programs. Yet the amount of money that many jurisdictions—especially small ones—can raise for lobbying and influence on important issues affecting psychology is limited. They look to the APAPO and to other SPTA organizations for assistance but often still come up short.

Protecting psychological practice from the encroachment of other licensed professional groups remains a critical issue in many jurisdictions. Expanding psychological practice to include (for appropriately trained professionals) prescription privileges is also important in some states. Assuring appropriate reimbursement rates and not being frozen or manipulated out of managed care-led systems is also an ongoing concern. These are 501C6 issues, not 501C3 but there is also overlap. We need the APAPO to be as robust an organization to promote, protect, and defend practice issues as the APA is for issues related to its mission.

What do you perceive as being issues of greatest concern to members of SPTAs?

Psychology practitioners face difficult times in some jurisdictions. Their incomes have too often been declining as other service providers have encroached on their areas of practice and as they have worked with managed care organizations too often intent on limiting payments to providers and insurance companies too often slow to pay their bills. Too much of their time being directed to activities that are administrative rather than service delivery. Less experienced practitioners struggle to repay their educational loans. And too often it is difficult to keep up with the new and emerging literature in their specific areas of practice.

If elected to the APA Presidency, what would you do to address these issues?

Currently, election to the APA presidency also includes election to the APAPO presidency. It seems to me the major need for SPTA-related practice activities is to help the APAPO become more financially viable, including the development of a new strategic plan.

The scope of practice of psychology must continue to expand both in the area of prescription privileges and in other areas of practice. Protecting our fields of practice from encroachment by other disciplines necessitates a continuously increasing knowledge base as well as political savvy. All of these issues need steady attention both from the APA (as related to the 501C3) and the APAPO (as related to the 501C6).

To assure that the practice of psychology can survive and thrive over the long run it will be necessary to expand the range of services that psychologists are qualified to deliver. Curricula would do well to broaden the skill sets that clinical/counseling and health care psychologists come out of graduate school knowing.

I believe we need to focus more on virtual delivery of services and to take on all the many complex issues of practice and regulation this type of service delivery open up. With advances in technology we will soon be able to deliver “face-to-face” services with clients all over the world. We must advance that agenda.

We need to continue to lobby to tweak the Affordable Care Act so that it is able to last over the long run and to persist in efforts to have psychology be a full partner in integrated care.

We need greater training to help persons with serious mental illness and their families.

We need more training in leadership and consultative roles since practitioners increasingly find themselves involved in such activities.

We need to help practitioners be able to deal with health, well-being, and high functioning in a way that is financially viable. Too often our training and systems are more focused on illness rather than health, well-being, and prevention.

Please add any comments you'd like which are not elicited above that address the affairs of state, provincial, and territorial psychological associations.

Throughout most of my career I've served in leadership roles in both professional associations, in academia, and in the not-for-profit and for-profit arenas. As a leader and consultant my areas of specialization have been turn-arounds and start-ups. I believe that both APA and the APAPO are in need of turn around and to work more effectively together.

Although the APAPO has fallen on hard financial times, the APA has been troubled by the issues associated with the Independent Review Report. Yet, from crises often come opportunities to re-think what we are doing and to try other approaches. RE: APAPO, we must add value to give psychologists reasons to pay the special assessment. These include the requirement that only licensed psychologists can participate (since in areas of practice other than mental health/health there are needs but many of those individuals are not necessarily licensed) and whether one has to be the APA to be a member of the APAPO. And finally we must educate the younger generation of practicing psychologists on the needs and benefits to them to be part of the APAPO and the SPTAs.

Thanks for the opportunity to address these questions. My positions are further elaborated on my website.