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A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

An organization that can communicate the wants and needs of minority students seeking a medical education is a necessity. Such an organization should also be able to effectively articulate its people's vast need for quality health care, and address itself to the provision of such care. We, in the Student National Medical Association, are building that kind of organization.

Our goals for the coming year are threefold. We must strengthen and further our internal organization as well as external and internal communications. We must address ourselves unceasingly to the problems of minority recruitment, admissions, and retention in schools educating health care professionals. We must also continue to develop and implement programs which will provide better health care for all people in general, and minority people in particular.

At the 8th Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois, SNMA laid the structural groundwork for an effective organization. With the advent of regional representation, executive powers, program function, and policy making were allocated to the Executive Committee and the newly formed Board of Directors. Subsequent experience has shown a need for more direct channels for membership participation and intercommunication at the chapter and regional level. This need can be addressed by a restructuring of the committees of the Executive Committee, under the leadership of the President-elect, an intra-chapter and regional program of organizational development, and, of course, by project designed to generate the funds necessary for effective operation at these levels.

We are planning four (4) meetings this year for the members of the grants and proposals, student affairs, and community affairs committee with relevant consultants to implement the above plan. For the first time, we will as coordinating committees, review the resolutions of the House of Delegates and attempt the implementation of the backlog of ideas generated during Conference time.

As most of you know, the real day to day strength of an association is in the competence and loyalty of the administrative staff. Our staff is young but capable, however, the staff can stand more knowledge regarding administrative development. To that end, we are supporting a program with the primary goals of developing good administrative procedures.

Effective communication is an organizational imperative. In this time of national uncertainty, when unpleasant political realities, a confusing, inflationary economic situation, and the existence of continued overt, convert, and institutional racism, we must have a strong, viable organization capable of serving the needs of the minority medical student.

Towards achieving this objective, we are developing very fine organs of communication in THE BLACK BAG and SNMA News. They will keep us abreast of conditions and ideas around the country and hopefully, around the world. The President's Newsletter is designed to provide a vehicle for effective internal communication. For these publications to function optimally we must not only have continued financial support, but most important, we must have a steady flow of contributions from our membership. It has been said that all who keep silent when knowledgeable deny their people and all people a lesson.

The major responsibility for the continuation and improvement of SNMA rests with the individual medical student. In order for an organization to function, its members must direct energy into the goals of the organization. In order to properly channel this energy, there must be coordination, communication and direction. Without these goals we cannot achieve our objective of molding SNMA into an increasingly effective national organization.

"We have begun . . . let us continue to build."
-Donald R. Ware, M.D., M.P.H.

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