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Candidate Responses: President-Elect Candidate Forum

The Nominating Committee asked each candidate for a response to this question:

Articulate your vision for health sciences librarians over the next decade. Share your roadmap for MLA to achieve this vision.

Candidate responses:

Gary D. Byrd, AHIP

Connie Schardt, AHIP

Gary D. Byrd, AHIP:

No matter which party wins the 2008 elections, the next decade will see major changes in American healthcare, since we simply cannot sustain the escalating costs of our current, flawed system. We know the major problems: very high numbers of preventable medical errors and hospital-induced infections, a silent epidemic of poorly managed chronic diseases like diabetes, large segments of our population without any health insurance, and underfunded "safety net" services. Our libraries are rich with information about effective systems of preventive, patient-centered care as well as the current best evidence for specific diagnostic and treatment strategies. If widely read and integrated into systems of care, this information could not only save many thousands of lives each year and improve health outcomes, but also substantially reduce the financial burden of this flawed system on our economy.

I believe that health sciences librarians, individually and collectively, have the opportunity and responsibility to be leaders in shaping a new American healthcare system. As Carolyn Clancy, director of AHRQ, has said, this new system will need to systematically bring together "compassion, information and the best science." We health information professionals know that knowledge is the key to informed healthcare decisions. We have the training and expertise to promote effective access to the most current and authoritative information for health professionals, students, researchers, patients, their families and our entire society. Thus, we will need to find more opportunities to speak out, passionately, about the value of accessible, well-managed health information resources, and about the cost-effective expertise we can bring to the process of repairing our flawed healthcare system. Rather than just focusing on what MLA can do for us, together we will need to better leverage our Association resources to help healthcare and political leaders understand the critical value of health sciences librarians.

Connie Schardt, AHIP:

One thing that I have learned during my seventeen years working for hospital libraries and ten years in an academic medical center is that, while the setting may be different, the services we provide and the issues we face are very similar. For all of us to succeed, we must be a vital community of health professionals, respected for our innovation, knowledge, and dedication to the health of the nation. We must be in a position to respond effectively and judiciously to our changing organizational and digital environments so we can make a difference in the delivery of health care.

We (you with MLA) can achieve this by:

Developing and maintaining a strong social network that enables health information professionals to easily and rapidly share ideas, research, and user-generated content; to collaborate on projects that improve the utilization of information; and to engage others, outside of MLA, in thoughtful discussions that support our community of health professionals
Supporting continuous learning through relevant and timely educational opportunities made available through a variety of platforms and experiences (e.g., Moodle, Webcasts) that meet the ever-changing needs of the members
Advocating for the work done by health sciences librarians, for national policies that promote access to information, and for health care standards that ensure the synthesis of best evidence into health care decisions, at the same time, understanding that each one of us has the responsibility and power to raise the profile of our profession

We, the association, need to be flexible and nimble so that we can respond quickly and cost effectively to support the activities of our members, sections, and chapters. In the end, the benefits of membership should be defined, not by access to restricted Web content, but rather by the community we create for each other.

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