The APA Board of Trustees voted at its December meeting to allocate substantial funds in the 2007 budget to implement a major upgrade of the Association's communication and public affairs initiatives. The vote came on a report from an ad hoc work group of the Board whose charge was to develop recommendations for strategies to improve the way APA gets its message across to the general public and the media. The goal is for APA to become more proactive in its efforts to provide an accurate portrait of psychiatrists, their patients, and the treatments available to fight mental illness, a depiction that the general public does not often see.

Among the projects approved are the following:

The Board approved $467,000 in new funding for these and other communications and public affairs initiatives as part of its approval of APA's 2007 operating budget of approximately $56 million. The budget also includes $600,000 that is to go into APA's reserve funds, along with any surplus not designated for a specific use. In other actions the Board

Among the strategies are producing guides and Web-based resources for psychiatrists practicing in underserved areas and for state and federal officials who develop policies related to mental health care; developing agendas that APA can use in advocacy efforts with legislative, regulatory, and private-sector organizations; providing technical support to district branches and members trying to address issues pertinent to practice in underserved areas; and enhancing partnerships on this topic with primary-care groups, which provide most of the mental health care in these areas.