Whole-of-Membership Google Group? Y/N?

[W. David Kulp III]

Hi, Boarders,

There has been a complaint about the lack of a mechanism for Members to address the entire Membership and raise concerns. This is primarily associated with the Bylaw vote, but does have broader implications.

Nichole would be our designated expert for this, but it did occur to me that a possible remedy is to create a Google Group for the entire Membership. This would enable all DCSTFI Members to debate DCSTFI issues, post concerns, share information about doctors, (rail against the Board) etc. This may have the downside that the Membership could be spammed by overactive posters. (I would not want to have to weed through my email to remove messages debating ACA, links to cheap prescriptions, or a discussion about where that toe mold came from, and would likely filter the mail unless it came from the group owner if I were a general Member.)

We're closing in on the deadline for the vote. Is there support to set up this mechanism - now? Or should we put this to a debate and a vote at the annual meeting?

Best regards,
David

[Heather L. Kimmel Ph.D.]

Hello, Board - at the risk of spamming us (!), David brings up a good point with regard to the Annual Meeting. I suggest that we go ahead and schedule this and get the room at AAAS booked sooner rather than later. Last year, we had a heck of a time trying to get this meeting and the election coordinated before the end of the year. I'll suggest that we have the Annual Meeting in mid- to late October (rather than in mid-December!). This will give the new fellows about a month or so to get settled in following orientation, but we won't be bumping up against November and December holiday travel schedules as much. Please send me your thoughts on this time frame.

I will take care of the room scheduling with AAAS once we decide when a good day will be. This meeting has historically been held at AAAS in the evening during the week so as to be accessible to as many of the local members as possible. Last year, we had a request for a conference call line, and I will try to get that set up again for this year. As in the past, members will be able to vote by proxy if they are not able to attend in person.

Cheers - Heather

[Teressa Trusty]

Hi All,

I think arranging the board meeting sooner rather than later is a good idea. As for a better way to communicate with the board, I agree we need some sort of mechanism. I have been getting more less complimentary comments recently, mainly following the rate increase and then once the recent bylaw change was sent out via email. This is in passing from Fellows at USAID, who I see the most.

Setting up a Google Group would allow us to see all the feedback. We would still need a system to ensure we responded with one voice though i.e., we discuss off-board and then one of the Board members posts the response, when it wasn't a toe fungus question or the like where we could offer a stock response that 'we're sorry about your problem but this is outside of the scope of the Board. Please contact XX."

The other option for the short term is to share all the emails with the entire Board that are raising these issues so we are aware of them, to again flag those that need a Board response, and then to divvy up responses to them. This is less transparent though and would not allow for members to see the questions and responses posted by others.

Regards,

Teressa

[Wm. David Kulp, III]

Teressa,

Two quick points before I have to go offline:

1. The Google group would primarily be for member-member interaction. Board comms would still come via the Secretary.

2.  We all have access to all of the dcstfi.info,dcstfi.billing, etc. accounts.  Nichole set the passwords back at the last meeting we all attended in early spring.  (March?)

It would be useful to get the word on the USAID street, especially if people are unhappy.  That's news we should act to remedy.

David

[Teressa Trusty]

Thanks for the clarification, David.

I don't think a Google group without moderation and Board participation is actually feasible. If its not planned that the Board will be participating and that this will just be for members to communicate, than I would not recommend setting it up. You may find this will turn into the kind of negative space that you referenced in your original email, particularly since we have a few people who we know are upset with the Board.

I general, I think that we do a poor job of communicating with the membership and finding a way to make the questions we receive and responses more public would be good.

As for what I hear at work, USAID fellows have complained about the premium increase, not understanding why it was so high and feeling like it was not the best choice.

Second, there is also confusion about what Blue Cross Blue Shield covers when traveling that has been a recent issue for fellows where they have had claims denied. Blue Cross Blue Shield should not have been their primary coverage in these cases, Fronteir Medex should have been which, AAAS provides to USAID fellows and maybe other? This is really something that we and AAAS should explain better since there's no one else to address the unique circumstances we face.

Also, no one seems to understand that neither of those covers you in a war zone i.e., Afghanistan or if there is a civil action taking place - Mali, South Sudan, Syria or the areas around it, etc. Yes, it's in the details of the plans but since it's an issue many fellows face, we may want to put in info in our FAQs about these kinds of issues and refer them to people who can answer these questions. You actually need separate, very expensive coverage in these locations. AAAS as our contracting agency should provide it. That's what the other contracting agencies at USAID do when they send their staff to Kabul, etc.

Finally, the Bylaw email came out of the blue. No one seems to know why we are considering this now.

Regards,

Teressa

[Nichole Fitzgerald]

Hello!

I agree with Teressa that we might not want to set up a venue for ranting (and potentially off-topic ranting). Perhaps another way to provide more information is to consolidate all of the questions that we are getting and put them in an email to everyone with answers. That way, everyone can see what the concerns have been and what we think are the answers. In that email I would also include "please feel free to submit more questions and we will continue to respond with answers for everyone." Does that seem reasonable?

With respect to what is covered during travel, I don't think that is our place to discuss. Fellows should consult Care First about what is covered. We are not representatives of BlueCross/BlueShield.

As to Teressa's point about that we don't do a good job communicating with the membership, maybe this will be addressed when I get the website up? Perhaps we could post some questions from the membership up there with the answers so that people feel more informed? I will work on that asap, hopefully this weekend.

-Nichole

[DCSTFI]

Nichole,

You and Teressa have good points on the web forum.  The request was for a listserv to directly address every Member, without Board interference. This compromise should address the major point of providing access to the whole membership, however.

I think I can get a web forum (moderated- although this will upset at least one Member) mostly set up this afternoon.  - Would you mind checking my work later and see if we can get this to go live over the weekend?  

Adding the questions part will be easy.  I've had very few people write in all year.  - Teressa, your questions are wholly new, so that will take some interaction with Todd next week, but now that we know that there are unanswered questions, we can work to address them.

Cheers,

David

[Nichole Fitzgerald]

Hi David,

I'm happy to help with whatever you need.

Nichole

[DCSTFI Board]

Hi, there!  I'm in between meetings, but I wanted to say that I agree with both Teressa and Nichole on the forum. Most listservs that I subscribe to, including the sefellows, are moderated to maintain civility and appropriateness in the communications. I like the idea of having a dynamic FAQ of sorts on the webisite, as there are undoubtedly questions that we have not thought of and would be very relevant for this. 

Teressa - I'm curious as to the Fronteir Medex plan that you mentioned. As you know, DCSTFI provides an international coverage plan for the international fellows (I think they are all USAID), but I don't it includes international travel coverage for members based domestically. Cynthia Robinson has made it very clear that AAAS fellows are not employees, therefore do not get staff benefits. I was a bit confused by what you wrote: are you saying that AAAS already provides the Fronteir insurance, or are you saying they should?  Either way, I think it would be perfectly fine to point fellows to the appropriate contact person regarding that coverage in our FAQs, as fellows may not realize that it's a separate coverage.

In retrospect, it seems we should have waited to propose the bylaw changes until the Annual Meeting so that we can talk about this issues in more detail. Since the California fellowship program begins on Nov 1, it would be good if we could give them an answer by then.  If we don't get a quorum for the votes, we'll table it until the meeting.

Is everyone OK with the Annual Meeting being held in mid- to late October? If so, I'll start checking into room reservations at AAAS and we can get that information out to the members ASAP. 

One of our members, Jo Anne Schneider, would like to have a conference call with all of us to talk about the pros and cons of eliminating the membership survey. I offered to talk with her directly, but she really would like to speak to all of us. She is available Monday between 2-3 pm or 5-7 pm or all day Tuesday until 7 pm. If you are available and would like to participate, let me know what day(s) and time(s) work for you and I'll get this set up.

Cheers - Heather

[Teressa Trusty]

Hi Heather,

Frontier Medex is AAAS' solution to the fact that USAID fellows need medical evacuation coverage when overseas. This is not something they provide to their regular staff. They have purchased a policy specifically for us because no regular health insurance plan that I know of in the US will provide this service. I expect they have found this was a better solution than to give us extra cash and tell us to get the coverage for each individual trip we take, but the latter is supposition on my part. It's almost certainly cheaper to purchase the group policy. It's often done for study abroad programs.

For back story, each of us was issued a copy of the Frontier Medex card back at the start of the year. I haven't used mine yet for this policy but have used them in the past when they were my carrier while I did my dissertation research in Bolivia. It's a decent med evac plan. It does not of course cover conflict zones and high risk sports (diving, parasailing, etc.) which is pretty standard.

Recently, a Fellow did not realize he should have used this to file a claim for a medical expense. That is how the topic came up. He was upset Blue Cross Blue Shield did not cover his expenses at an emergency room in a foreign country. He and another fellow both approached me about the fact that Blue Cross Blue Shield did not cover his claim which is how I learned about it.

I fully agree we should not provide the details about coverage but our FAQs could reference the unique circumstance of AAAS stipend fellows and overseas travel, directing them to AAAS or to Frontier Medex for this type of issue.

As for the rest, yes to October meeting. I am available for a call from 2-3 on Monday but not later. I may have some time on Tuesday afternoon as well.

Regards,

Teressa

[Heather L. Kimmel Ph.D.]

Thanks, Teressa - this information regarding the USAID fellows' insurance interesting, and helpful to know, especially if the question is coming up more often. I think we should ask AAAS to put something on their health insurance for fellows page about this, and we can point to that page in the FAQs and website.  I'll find out who is in charge of that site and we can make the suggestion directly to that person. 

Cheers - Heather

[Teressa Trusty]

Yes, that's a good idea. The information may now be available on Fellows Central but I haven't explored to see if it is and what it says.

Regards,

Teressa

[Heather L. Kimmel Ph.D.]

Teressa - just a quick note. I haven't seen this info on the FC website, but it may only be viewable for USAID fellows. In the meantime, I'm checking to see who's responsible for posting that info. 

Cheers - Heather

Sent from my iPhone

[Teressa Trusty]

I don't see anything either about Frontier Medex. They may not have posted it since it is only for a subset of fellows.

Regards,

Teressa