HEALTH AND SOCIAL WELFARE TASK FORCE 

Final Report – April 8, 2002

 

Members: Steven Aufrecht, chair; Ray Bailey, Biomedical Program; Tina DeLapp, Nursing; Martha Hatch, CAS;  Carl Hild, ICHS;  Cheryl Mann, Human Services;  Karen Perdue, UA Statewide;  Brian Saylor, Provost’s office; Bernie Segal, Health Sciences;  Beth Sirles, Social Work;  Robin Wahto and Cindy Zimmerman, joint Allied Health representatives;  Karen Ward, Center for Human Development.  (Allan Turner, Education, withdrew before first meeting because of other committee appointment.)                      

 

Initial Charge:   “The overall charge of the task force is to prepare and examine alternatives for more effective coordination of the health and social welfare instruction, research and service mission at UAA, particularly on the Goose Lake Campus.”

 

Standards:  Provost’s initial memo established the following standards:

 

Bring an increased awareness and focus to health and social welfare instruction research and service mission at UAA*

Maximize choices of health careers available to UAA students

Accommodate expanded health service degree programs and other educational offerings

Promote improvements in administrative and instructional efficiency

Improve communication among existing faculty across all involved units

Gain strong faculty support

 

(*While nothing in the task force recommendations is inconsistent with any of the criteria, the task force focused most on the bold points above. )

 

Approach:

 

Steps in this process:

1.        Provost charges task force (see January 24, 2002 Memo)

2.        Meeting 1 – Each member answers set of questions and returns them (see Task Force Memo)

3.        Chair sorts out responses and organizes Draft 1 to task force members (see

4.        “Meeting 2” - Individuals review the Draft 1 and spend 1-2 hours responding

5.        From these responses Chair develops Draft 2 and  group interactions

6.        “Meeting” 3 – Three groups of 3-5 members met to discuss Draft 2 and begin on recommendations

7.        Meeting 3 responses sent back to members

8.        Meeting 4 – whole task force met to come to agreement.

9.        Draft report sent to members and Provost

10.     Finalized version sent to members and provost

Note:  Initial deadline of March 24 was extended to April 1, 2002.  This draft is being submitted on April 1, 2002, but we have asked for a one-week extension to for the final report..

 

Conclusions and Recommendations

 

Some Basic Givens

 

1.             Primary Responsibilities of UAA* are:

                a.                education for Alaska’s health and social welfare workforce

                b.                research, both theoretical and applied, that sheds light on health and social welfare problems

 

2.             Different programs will have different perspectives on issues and this can:

                a.                cause tension and competition for resources and students

                b.                provide multi-dimensional views of the problems the state faces                               

These differences are generally positive and productive, but if allowed to get out of hand can be destructive.

*UAA and Alaska are used here because this task force’s attention is at that level, but we all realize that the next step includes the whole University and the problems we deal with are not limited to Alaska.


 

General Recommendations

 

1.             Develop and  maintain an ongoing inventory and information center of all health and social welfare programs

                a.                All degree programs

                b.                All centers, programs, projects which contribute to health and social welfare goals through research, training, service projects, etc.

                c.                All faculty and staff who have health and social welfare related expertise

 

                Benefits:                UAA faculty and staff can find out what all is going on relatively easily and can contact and collaborate with people doing related work

                                                The rest of the University and community can find out who is doing what and how to contact them.

                                                There is a unified ‘health and social welfare’ identity.

 

                Challenges:                Keeping the information current

                                                Organizing the information so it is easily accessible.

                This will need dedicated time and technology to maintain.  This Taskforce has made an initial contribution toward this effort.

 

2.             Clarify, coordinate, and focus UAA health and social welfare mission.

This will require a careful touch to balance incentives and budget allocations to focus on identifying and addressing priority problems and maintaining existing educational programs and individual creativity and innovation.

                Potential Benefits:                Improved use of resources through collaboration

                                                                Ability to better respond to state health and social welfare needs

                                                                Cost savings through minimizing duplication

                Potential Obstacles:                Loss of autonomy and flexibility

Longer  time lines to coordinate and get approval

Uses up more of people’s time

                                                                                                                                               

3.             Focus UAA capability to directly attack major state health and social welfare problems.

This requires:

a.                identification and prioritizing areas of major health and social welfare problems,

b.            identifying faculty and staff expertise and interest

c.                developing funding, release time and other incentives to attract faculty and staff to special projects

d.                support for programs to maintain their ongoing education and research commitments when faculty and staff are also tapped for special projects

 

Potential benefits:                Improved quality of life for Alaskans through projects targeted at improving specific health problems

Exciting challenges for faculty

Potential obstacles:                Reduced resources  from other key functions

Lack of support system to coordinate and facilitate interdisciplinary work

Burnout for faculty who do special projects on top of regular load

 

4                Maintain existing college structure (minus Education) but develop a coordination infrastructure which can bring together all the health and social welfare programs on campus, perhaps a health council

 

The idea of an all encompassing ‘Health College’ seems to have general theoretical support, but concerns arise when dealing with details.  Some problems are ultimately inherent:

a.                Programs which have health and social welfare components also have alliances with other substantive disciplines (ie public administration) or have connections in other areas such as client or program delivery (Allied Health).

Some problems are simply related to concerns with loss of power, autonomy, access, etc.

b.                Will programs lose their current direct access to the Dean?

c.                Will programs have less budget and hiring independence?

d.                Concerns of promotion and tenure standards being changed

 

The potential benefits include:

a.                Presence and image of a unified health and social welfare college housed in a major new building could enhance programs and ability to get funding and cooperation

b.                Synergy and improved communications of related programs located physically together

c.                Ease of coordination of interdisciplinary activities within a single college

 

This recommendation was the most difficult to agree on.  However, in the end all present a Meeting 4 agreed this was the option that was most feasible at this time, though a future unified college is not out of the questions.  At this point, the two most obvious candidates for inclusion in the new Health and Social Welfare College are WWAMI and Allied Health.  Psychology is also a key player.  Also Criminal Justice, already in the College, needs to be integrated better into the mission.

 

5.             Develop a coordinating infrastructure which supports interdisciplinary, inter-college, and intercampus collaboration

 

UAA cannot work on these issues in a vacuum.  While UAA can do some things immediately to improve how we accomplish our health and social service missions, ultimately we must work with the rest of the UA system.  While we need our own internal coordinating infrastructure, the UA system needs one too.

 

 

                Specific recommendations:

 (Note: Some specific projects fit under multiple goals.  They will be listed only once)


1.             Develop and maintain ongoing inventory and information center of all health and social welfare programs

a.                UAA now has a National Library of Medicine grant to develop a website of health (defined broadly enough to include social welfare) research in Alaska, the Arctic.  We should coordinate what we do with them.  They are doing this with a two year grant for $50,000 a year, which should give us some sense of the kind of commitment we will need to add in all the other stuff beyond research.

b.                The President’s Community of Science project is an infrastructure which is under utilized by UAA faculty.  A goal of 70-80% participation by December 2002 would be a good start.  Staff, either in the Colleges or Provost’s office will be needed to identify missing faculty and give assistance getting data on line.

                c.                Communicate what we do across UAA, UA, and the state (This was implied in the Talking Notes, but not explicitly listed.)

d.                Utilize a variety of media - websites, listservs, print newsletters, KRUA and other media, a high quality Health Journal, Annual Health Report, etc.

 

2.             Clarify, coordinate, and focus health and social welfare mission AND Focus UAA capability to directly attack major state health and social welfare problems

a.                Create a statewide health and social welfare planning and agenda setting group so that what UAA does is coordinated with other campuses

b.                Create a UAA health and social welfare coordinating group which does the same for UAA, in coordination with the statewide group

 

3.             Develop a coordinating infrastructure which supports interdisciplinary, inter-college, and intercampus collaboration

There need to be designated staff along with faculty whose workload includes facilitating cooperation through the removal of obstacles and development of incentives.  Some specific areas identified: curriculum coordination; staff replacement for people with course releases; peer review valuing collaboration; a leadership team to support things; IRB; grants and contracts.

 

 

Additional Comments:  The above pages do capture, in a very dry way, the essence of what this task force discussed and accomplished.  There is an extensive set of documents which are captured on the webpage the taskforce maintained and used as a central filing system. 

 

http://gaius.cbpp.uaa.alaska.edu/mpa/health_and_social_welfare_task_f.htm

 

Key documents on that web site include the Meeting 1 responses of each member and the initial consolidation of those contributions which give us an initial stab at:

a.             an inventory of UAA health and social welfare programs and activities

b.                identification of Alaska’s major health problems and UAA’s contributions to alleviating them

 

 

Additional Comments From the Chair of the Task Force:

 

My work on this task force has caused me to believe that there is a unique opportunity for the university to make a greater direct, positive impact on the health and social welfare of Alaska.  In addition to our traditional role of education for health and social welfare workers and research and service, with good organization and financial and administrative support, we could much better focus additional efforts on some of Alaska’s major problems.  I see great potential here.  The work of the faculty members of this task force convinces me that all are dedicated to that goal. 

 

Success in fulfilling that opportunity rests in finding new ways to support faculty and staff and departments so that our traditional tasks of education are not diminished, yet faculty have adequate time, and departments have adequate resources to fulfill those traditional commitments and take on the new ones.  

Obstacles to cooperation must be identified and dismantled and incentives must be put in place.  This is basically what we mean by infrastructure – that there is an underlying capacity to assist and support the goals in ways that do not require continuous extraordinary effort by faculty and administration and staff. 

 

                I would also note that what we are embarking on here is similar to a strategic planning exercise for which private companies hire consultants, at significant fees, the best of whom have considerable training, skill, and experience in such work.  We commandeer faculty, most of whom do not have such expertise, and expect them to do the work on top of their existing full work loads. 

 

Committees are part of the tradition of colleges and universities.  This is part of collegiality among professionals and has played a key role in university governance.  However, I suspect that the tradition began when faculty had relatively light teaching loads, and most faculty research and research funding was far less competitive than today.  Also adjunct faculty were limited to occasional experts invited to teach a special course, they didn’t constitute half the faculty or more.

 

                To accomplish the sorts of organizational coordination tasks this task force feels is needed will require a combination of:  experts in the subject areas (health and social welfare);  experts in management (either in-house or hired consultants).  The time required of these faculty to do the kind of sophisticated and detailed job necessary, should be recognized and other workloads on the faculty must be proportionately reduced.  If this is not done, either the quality will reflect the over extension, or the university will burn out its best people.

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