Members Present: Mary Hennings, Danny Sands, Randy Houk, Sarah Krűg, Joe Ternullo, Debra Cobb, Vera Rulon, Judy Danielson, John Grohol, Astra Titus, Kistein Monkhouse, Jay Spitulnik, Matthew Holt, Vaughn K.
Full attendance record available here.
Welcome: Mary
Minutes from last committee meeting
Approved.
Treasurer-Membership Report
$168,000. Will shortly be reduced by Randy’s salary. We lost one corporate sponsor.
Brand Purpose: Judy, Vaughn
True team effort (Slide presentation). Judy’s intro starts with marketing strategy around manifesto. Key funding timeframe begins December 1st. Initial two phases: 1) brand purpose; 2) 4-way meeting with committees to decide how to roll out the new brand. Gathered feedback, found use cases, interviewed long standing members, board feedback, referenced member survey. Members want to know why we exist. Things will evolve and change. Judy continues summarizing using slide presentation. Dennis continues re: compelling reason why we need a brand purpose. Dennis reviews relevant slides. 1) Context; 2) Barriers; 3) What’s different now? Three very important aspects are: 1) Explosion of health care data; 2) Acknowledgment of the social and economic determinants that are factors in a person’s mental and physical health; 3) Pandemic has served as an accelerator for behavior change (e.g., embracing Telemedicine). Committee believes these three aspects (plus others) provide the energy SPM can tap into. Dennis presents three simple brand purpose statements: 1) Why does SPM exist? For the “How?” and the “What?” presentation handed to Astra and Randy. Randy discuss the How? guided by presentation slides. Astra: Important to her is bringing PM to underserved communities. Sarah discusses the What? Big factor is creating communities; connect stakeholders, advocate for policy and culture change (e.g., change the way we speak about patients), educate by curating content, exemplify PM in every way SPM operates. Dennis continues with explanation of how SPM can be differentiated (“Our movement is more focused on individuals and organizations enabling a health care transformation behavior”). Not unlike a social movement. Judy opens the conversation to comments about the presentation so far. Danny felt inspired! Thinks it too narrow to say we’re saving lives. Aren’t we also improving health? We should also think about the expanding complexity of health care. Feels parts of presentation are a little too relationship-heavy. Also a bit too communication-heavy. Many other organizations are doing the same thing. Judy comments that the way we would institute change is from the inside out. Astra makes the point that changing hearts and minds sometimes takes more than communication. It takes policy changes and changes to laws to further goals. Mary wonders about the How? statements. To her, it’s about mutual trust and collaboration between patients, health care professionals and caregivers. Astra adds how do we get patients and caregivers to use their voice? Vaughn poses: is the purpose of this organization to help promote change in health care policies and procedures rather than communication, which has been part of SPM’s history? Danny disagrees. Says we’ve been trying to play both sides of the coin almost from our start. Matthew comments: not comfortable with phrase “saving lives.” Would like to see the brand purpose state that SPM wants to move the relationship between patients, providers and caregivers to the way we’d like to see them interact. Mary likes the idea, but says that it takes us away from methods, like technology, and puts more weight on communication. Matthew doesn’t agree. Says tech is implicit in the interaction (collaboration, communication, trust). Astra says it goes to tech as well. SPM can be another voice for advocacy in tech also in how to make info more accessible through tech. Danny says we should not be in the business of promoting a specific technology. There are tools that help us achieve our goals and we should be supporting those. Dennis comments he likes the term “equitable relationships.” Says there is no equity if an individual doesn’t have all the information he should have. We should be thinking about equitable access to information and if we have to help certain communities get access to that information, that seems to be part of our mission. Danny says instead of referring to IT we should be saying ICT (as in rest of world) meaning “information and collaboration technology.” Vaughn adds: several themes have emerged. “Saving lives” doesn’t seem to work. Overall structure of health care and support of those doesn’t come through strongly in the statement of brand purpose. Not much focus on ways of thinking around participation for the players who are going to be creating health care in the future. Asks Judy – having heard this feedback, what do you want to do with it? Judy responds – if we made the changes we discussed today, would we get support from the board for the brand purpose? Kistein asks to review slide 10, re: connecting stakeholders. Randy says this is a statement of we can do, different from what we have done. Danny asks – when we look at our research mission, and see the JoPM, where does that fit within our mission? Judy says that after an approved brand purpose statement, things like the Journal would be evaluated through the filter of the new brand purpose. Judy says one of the next steps will be for committees to use the brand purpose to evaluate the work of each committee and reshape it to align with brand purpose. Vaughn comments – ask yourselves (from a negative viewpoint) who would be surprised that we were engaged in a particular activity (e.g., publishing a Journal)? Dennis says any brand purpose, if written well, is the hardest for an org to take on and the most empowering. Mary points out – the first things we need to tackle are giving Randy the tools she needs to fundraise, raising those funds, growing membership, and growing our impact. Randy: to bring money in, she needs a clean, compelling story she can tell to corporations, foundations, etc., that makes them want to jump in and support us. Mary asks: is the brand purpose group going to make changes to the wording and if so get this out for approval quickly because we have a deadline before end of November. Danny is supportive of initial brand purpose statement (with changes) but wants to make sure that every Board member has had to chance to weigh in. Brian in favor of moving forward on the suggestions that have been made in today’s meeting. Others agree this is a good place to start. Kistein echoes those sentiments. Danny makes motion to accept the brand purpose statement along with the changes discussed. Seconded. Carried unanimously. Brand committee meeting on 10/27 and will return to the Board at end of week. Mary says part of next steps is focusing on deliverables. Not everything will work, so we will need several alternatives. Committees will meet to discuss how to turn brand purpose ideas into reality.
Debbie stepping down from Board end of year.
Board Meeting of November 23: Mary
Discussion around channels. Finalizing committee charters. Being an officer. Change management (please read).
Adjourned at 7:30 — Next meeting: November 23, 2021, 6:00 – 7:00 pm ET
Respectfully submitted,
Eric N Bersh
SPM Board Secretary
