Your industry bible.

As the year draws to a close, we would like to take stock of our accomplishments and setbacks. As an organization, APHSA has gone through--and is going through--much change, with an unusual number of staff members taking opportunities to move on to greener pastures and new careers. This gives us concerns as well as opportunities, concerns that we might not be able to keep the best talents that we need in order to fulfill our mission to help our members to help the country's most in need, and opportunities for us to bring in new energy and fresh ideas. The departure and retirement of top-level managers has helped invigorate us and led to an organizationwide self-assessment of our mission and strategic plan, our policy-making process, and how we might make the workplace more in tune with our staff's needs. APHSA is undergoing a lot of changes. We are sure that it will be for the better for both members as well as staff.

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More specifically with Policy & Practice magazine. Looking back, this year has seen our magazine becoming more inclusive. We now have expanded our coverage and reach to every segment of our public human service community, whether you are a technology manager, a child welfare worker, a food stamp director or a Medicaid official. We have gone where our predecessors never went before in terms of topics. Looking ahead, we plan to spike our readers' interest by including more topics that have not been covered but are emerging issues. For example, obesity and health issues that will have widespread effect on Americans' health and lifestyle and that will affect state and local governments' pocketbooks, or the little-talked-about safety issue of social service workers in the field.

This is our magazine's mission--aligned with the overall goal of our organization--to serve the members of our community, to help our members help the country's most in need, with new energy and fresh ideas each issue. To do that, we are planning to increase our publication frequency to accommodate the many voices that have been scrambling to be heard through our magazine. We plan to make sure that Policy & Practice will continue to be the leading, authoritative, most-comprehensive publication for your field, nothing less than your "industry bible."

Frank Solomon is director of communications at APHSA.