Dear fellow Division 44 Members! It is my pleasure to provide you an update on activities in the American Psychological Association’s Council of Representatives (COR). David Rivera, PhD and I are now in the middle of our first terms as Council members, joined by Sarah Burgamy, PsyD. Burgamy’s term will be ending at the end of the year, and we are excited to welcome David Pantalone, PhD, who joins COR in January.
Briefly, for those of you who are not that familiar or perhaps even reading the COR report for the first time, the Council of Representatives is the policy-setting body of APA. It is composed of representatives from each division, each state, provincial, and territorial association, and finally, thanks to the support of APA membership, representatives from ethnic psychological associations. Members are elected to Council by divisional votes. Each division has representation, but via an apportionment ballot, which each APA member receives at this time of year, you have the opportunity to apportion votes to different divisions, increasing their representation in Council. As a result of strong support from Division 44, we have been able to have three seats on Council for a number of years now, which amplifies our ability to advocate for the issues that matter to our Division 44 members. We want to be your voice, so thank you so much for your support, and please keep coming to us with the issues you want to advance within APA.
Council has formal meetings twice a year, and also additional activities such as Town Halls and a number of “caucuses,” which allow for collaboration of Council members who are passionate about overlapping issues. As Council members, all three of us are active in multiple caucuses, and Rivera and I also hold leadership roles in two of these caucuses. The actual formal meetings – one of which is in the winter of each year, and the other of which immediately precedes the APA Convention – are where the actual business of Council happens, including review and adoption of new APA policies. The Fall Council meeting occurred in Seattle, WA, on August 6–7, 2024.
Let us take a moment to review some important areas in which APA took action through Council this year.
Council’s agenda includes action items – policies or other things that Council must adopt (or reject) on behalf of APA as well as informational items. Some of the informational items can be very important. In August, Council received an update on the progress in transitioning Health Service Psychology into a truly multi-tiered profession, including clarifying the scope of Master Level and Doctoral Level practitioners, strengthening training standards, and ensuring that this process leads to a vibrant and effective health service psychology field where we can all collaborate to improve patient outcomes.
We are pleased to share with the Division 44 members that APA took important stances on issues of social justice at the August 2024 Council Meeting: adopting policy statements on Immigrant Health; restitutive and reparative practices in Individual, Collective, and Intergenerational Trauma Recovery (PDF, 256KB)opens in new window; calling for a Global Ceasefire (PDF, 87KB)opens in new window; and supporting Education, Research, and Activism against Violations of the Rights of Girls and Women (PDF, 115KB)opens in new window. Your Division 44 representatives were actively involved in these discussions. Rivera was a co-mover of the Intergenerational Trauma Recovery and Global Ceasefire items.
Concerns were raised with one of the policies that was on the agenda for Council this year in terms of using gender-inclusive language and concepts. We had many conversations with involved parties throughout Council (some of them late at night!), and we are delighted to say that we were able to find common ground and move forward with truly inclusive language that is cognizant of gender and sexually diverse individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community. These collaborations really emphasize the importance of the depth of personal relationships that we have been able to build with colleagues in other parts of APA; and although it is difficult to capture in the minutes, a significant portion of our time and energy on Council goes into building these relationships and strengthening our ability to co-advocate alongside psychologists with shared values representing other entities within APA.
APA also took action on a number of important issues related to the future of our own work as psychologists: adopting new guidelines and clinical practice guidelines, including an updated version of APA’s Telepsychology Guidelines (PDF, 850KB)opens in new window, and Guidelines for the Use of Nonhuman Animals in Behavioral Projects in Schools. These activities also recognized the role of psychologists in physical healthcare, including Guidelines on Nonpharmacological Treatment of Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain (PDF, 2MB)opens in new window and recognitions of the Geropsychology and Addiction Psychology specialties.
Going beyond psychology as a practice to psychology’s role in the new challenges of the modern world, we also passed APA’s first Statement on Artificial Intelligence. I had the opportunity to be involved in the process of creating this statement.
Council continues to try to address complex issues in nuanced and thoughtful ways, while respecting the differences in perspectives among bodies within APA and Council Members. De las Fuentes, APA President, continued the strong tradition of inclusive and sensitive leadership, building on progress made in this regard by Bryant and others before her.
In addition to these special policy-related activities (called “New Business Items” in APA lingo), we also take time for other activities, such as listening to remembrances of psychologists we have recently lost. Council also approved newly appointed Fellows of the American Psychological Association. We’d like to take a moment in particular to congratulate all the new Fellows from Division 44 (see the article in this issue)!
The next formal meeting of Council will occur February 21–22, 2025. We can’t wait for our first opportunity to attend a meeting with our new member, Pantalone, although Rivera and I will miss having Burgamy at our sides.
We are already hard at work on several issues that we hope to have come before Council in February, and as always, we are very open to your input and to collaborating with everyone in Division 44 to advance policies important to our members and the community we serve.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to continue being your voice!