I want to thank my predecessor, the immediate past-president, Dr. Haroon Durrani for doing a great job leading the organization last year. Under his leadership, APPNA proved its resilience and has finally fully come out of the challenges related directly or indirectly to the COVID-19 crisis. It stands even stronger than before. The organization is on sound financial footings and the bitterness and divisions of the past long gone.
APPNA must continue to grow and prosper. The only path ahead for us is one that takes it to even greater heights. For that to happen though, we must not relent. The hard work must continue.
In order to be more inclusive and give opportunities to more members to serve, we are making some small but significant changes to the Board of Director (BOD) appointed standing committees this year. For the first time in APPNA’s history, no former presidents are being appointed as chairs of any standing committee, nobody who has served in the past as chair of a particular standing committee is being reappointed as a chair and no one is being appointed to more than one standing committee. I thank all the past leaders for the great services that they all rendered. I have discussed with many of them and they agree that new leadership must be groomed and afforded opportunities to serve and shine.
Our Constitution and bylaws (CABL) were thoroughly reviewed and revised/replaced in December of 2021. These were the result of some really hard work and long hours put in by the then CABL committee. The bylaws have been in effect since then. As with any good document though, the practice and implementation has revealed some shortcomings and confusion. The new CABL committee is being tasked with reviewing and further improving the document.
APPNA wishes to continue its great work in Pakistan. To that effect, we want to increase our ground presence in Pakistan. The BOD has approved exploring ways to formally register an APPNA subsidiary as an international non-governmental organization (NGO) in Pakistan. Besides giving us protecting us with legal safeguards, this would also allow us to use our expertise in much better and bigger ways to improve healthcare and medical education in Pakistan. We would be able to petition international donor agencies for grants and thus expand our work many folds more than what we do now.
We will continue to explore ways for establishing a state of the art hospital and medical university in Pakistan. I will be requesting the BOD to appoint a task force into exploring the feasibility and various options in this regard.
The membership showed some signs of growth last year. We must however acknowledge that our organization’s membership has been aging. New, younger membership is absolutely essential for the continued health and well being of APPNA. I hope that the membership committee will come up with ideas to increase membership on a steady basis. To that effort, the Young Physicians Committee must also continue to engage with all the young physicians that it helps with the process of getting training slots here so that they continue to associate with APPNA and become full members.
It has been felt that APPNA may not have been particularly attentive to the needs of its membership in Canada. To that extent, we are moving forward this year with President-elect Dr. Asif Mohiuddin’s proposal and asking the BoD to approve a separate Advocacy Committee for attending to the peculiar needs of our membership in Canada. We also encourage the Canadian membership to give proposals for hosting major APPNA meetings in Canada. The CABL committee is being asked to explore ways for ensuring representation to Canada based members in the BOD.
APPNA concerns itself with promoting social, healthcare and medical-education related affairs in Pakistan. It is also concerned with myriad of problems its membership in particular and the wider Pakistani diaspora in general faces in Pakistan on a day-to-day basis. To resolve these issues, APPNA must continue to engage with the government there. We all may have our political opinions about the governments there but as an organization, we must understand that we have to engage with whatever government is in place there.
For this year, we are also planning to finally start an APPNA TV YouTube health channel for live broadcast in Pakistan and rest of the world. Please let the APPNA office know if you would be interested in participating in topics related to your area of expertise.
We will continue to advance our advocacy & philanthropic work here in North America.
Our strategy meeting this year is going to be held at the APPNA central office in Chicago, IL the weekend of January 27th. It would be an opportunity for you to present your thoughts and proposals for taking the organization forward. Please join us for a round table discussion on your proposals.
I am looking forward to working with our Board of Directors, Dr. Haroon Durrani as the immediate past-president and Dr. Asif Mohiuddin as the President-elect.
APPNA Zindabad,
Pakistan Paindabad.
Arshad Rehan
President APPNA 2023[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
