WELCOME FROM KAMDEN HOFFMANN, PHAA PRESIDENT

Dear Fellow Alumni:

On behalf of the Public Health Alumni Association (PHAA) Board, I would like to welcome you to the alumni website for the GW School of Public Health and Health Services. I hope you will use this site to keep updated on alumni, faculty and student projects and to stay in touch with your School and your fellow classmates.

The new PHAA board, selected by the alumni in the summer of 2006, has worked extremely hard over the last year to create a vision and mission of which alumni can be proud.

Throughout the year, Board members have volunteered their time to build a sense of community among the School, alumni, and students, through a variety of activities and outreach to promote the following goals:

• Establish and maintain a strong base of support so that all alumni can participate, contribute, network and benefit from involvement with PHAA, with the larger GW alumni association and with the current student body;
• Institutionalize a solid structure for SPHHS alumni to invest philanthropy and membership;
• Develop opportunities to share and exchange professional experiences among alumni and with current students.

We are very excited to be building a strong, expansive and inclusive PHAA, to reach out to all alumni of the School of Public Health and Health Services, to create a greater sense of pride and commitment to the School, and to become more visible as an association.

In working towards those goals, we regularly host networking events, community service opportunities and professional development sessions for alumni. If you have not had the chance to take part in these, we hope to see you at one of them soon.

The PHAA is also proud of its role in helping to develop the Capital Connection Fund. To celebrate the School's tenth anniversary, SPHHS and the PHAA have partnered to launch that fund, which will provide financial assistance so that students can take advantage of off-campus research, internships, conferences and other professional development activities.

Supported through contributions of alumni, faculty, and other friends of SPHHS, the Capital Connection Fund announced its first set of award winners in Fall 2007. We thank all of our alumni for their current and future support of this fund.

Your involvement in the School is important to us. We hope that you will find a place in the association that satisfies you, whether it is through involvement on one of our committees, participation in our activities, or however else you wish to be involved. To connect with the Public Health Alumni Association, please don't hesitate to contact us at phaa@gwumc.edu.

Best regards,

Kamden Hoffmann, MA, MPH
President
Public Health Alumni Association