Building a Partnership at the Top: Introducing PCHP's New Co-Editor-in-Chief, Ann-Gel Palermo

Abstract

Building a Partnership at the Top:Introducing PCHP's New Co-Editor-in-Chief, Ann-Gel Palermo A. Hal Strelnick, MD There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about. Margaret J. Wheatley An academic journal about partnerships, such as Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP), I believe, should practice what it preaches and seek to build sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships with organizations, such as Community Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH). The PCHP brochure on the Johns Hopkins University Press' website still includes the CCPH subscription discount, but the Internet has altered how our readers access the articles that we publish in the journal and now earns most of its income from downloads of individual articles rather than individual and institutional subscriptions. While we are pursuing more Open Access for PCHP, we can better ensure the "community voice" in the journal by having its leadership reflect the communities of color that we seek to serve. We are taking several steps in that direction in recruiting a community activist as Co-Editor-in-Chief supported by several more community-based and -oriented associate editors. Beginning in the fall of 2019, Ann-Gel Palermo joined PCHP as my Co-Editor-in-Chief. Because she has earned both an MPH from the University of Michigan and a DrPH from the City University of New York's School of Public Health at Hunter College and holds the titles of Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Education and Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, I want to assure our readers that Dr. Palermo has been both a longtime community leader in East Harlem and a community advocate at the national level. Her academic career seeks to educate physicians to better serve and partner with their patients and their patients' families and communities. On the local level, Ann-Gel has been a community health activist in East Harlem for the last twenty years. Since 1999, she has been a board member for the East Harlem Community Health Committee, Inc., and since 2003 served as the Chair of its Health Policy & Legislation Subcommittee. For a 3-year term (2004–2007) she was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the HIV Health & Human Services Planning Council of New York, where she co-chaired its annual needs assessment. Then, from 2007 to 2011 Dr. Palermo served as a member of Manhattan's Community Board #11 in East Harlem. She also served as the community member from 2005 to 2008 on the New York Academy of Medicine's Institutional Review Board. More recently, Ann-Gel co-founded two organizations focused on emergency preparedness in East Harlem. First, in 2013, she co-founded the East Harlem Emergency Preparedness Collaborative, which is comprised of a cross-section of emergency management officials focused on neighborhood-based planning, readiness, and response efforts in East Harlem. After the March 12, 2014, natural gas explosion that killed 8 and injured more than 70 people, the East Harlem Community Organizations Active in Disasters was founded in 2015, a coalition of local organizations and businesses that work to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters that affect the lives of East Harlem residents. And this is only a very partial listing of Ann-Gel's community and civic leadership! [End Page 7] On the national stage, Dr. Palermo has also advocated for the community's role in public health, health care, and research. From 2006 to 2010 she served on the National Institute of Health's federal advisory committee, the Council of Public Representatives, and co-chaired their Role of the Public in Research Work Group, which successfully developed definitions and frameworks on community engagement for the National Institutes of Health, published in the American Journal of Public Health.1 (Our new Associate Editor Elmer R. Freeman, MSW, Executive Director of the Center for Community Health Education Research and Service, served an over-lapping term with Ann-Gel on the National Institutes of Health's Council of Public Representatives from 2007 to 2011.) Dr. Palermo also served as a two-term member of the Board of Directors of CCPH from 2011...