A new year begins!

Hello all WA NAPNAP members and followers!  Our new year for the Chapter Officers has begun.  We welcome Anne Pettinger (new CE Co-Chair) and Devon Bank (new President-Elect) who are beginning their terms of office.  Karen Wilkinson is now our Chapter President, Gabrielle Seibel is now the Past-President.  Karen Kilian (past Past-President) will continue to facilitate this website to the members. 

The Chapter would like to say a hearty thank-you to Gabrielle Seibel for all her efforts as President of the Chapter as well as to Jenna Welch for her work with the CE events.  Our Chapter had a great year of stable membership and amazing CE events.  Our stragegic Plan continues to evolve and will be posted on this website soon for access to all the members. 

Nominations for the 2014 Distinguished Member are open (due by early next Spring) as well as applications for a Special Project (due by Sept 7th).  Please check out the information about those awards in the "special forms" section. 

We are lucky to have a very active Legislative Chair, Marijo Ratcliffe, who always brings us up to date on what is going on in the Legislature.  The upcoming year will be an interesting one, as the Affordable Care Act starts to become a true reality.  Many changes will be starting in January 2014, and it is our responsibility to know what those changes are and how it will affect our practice.  Therefore, a Legislative Page will be added to this website so we can try to stay on top of the changes.  Additionally, in the "links" section, a couple new links have been added:  The Kaiser Family Foundation as well a direct link to the section on health care reform.  The Kaiser Family Foundation is NOT related to Kaiser Permanente; but is an organization that is helping all of us keep on top of the changes coming down the road. 

Per their website:  Kaiser is a non-profit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the U.S., as well as the U.S. role in global health policy.  Unlike grant-making foundations, Kaiser develops and runs its own research, journalism and communications programs, sometimes in partnership with other non-profit research organizations or major media companies. We serve as a non-partisan source of facts, information, analysis and journalism for policymakers, the media, the health care community, and the public. Our product is information, always provided free of charge — from the most sophisticated policy research, to basic facts and numbers, to in depth health policy news coverage provided by our news service, KHN, to information young people can use to improve their health or elderly people can use to understand their Medicare benefits. 

On a side note, if you ever have questions about the Chapter, or are having trouble with the links, please send us an email via "contact us".