MeADE Board Meeting Minutes
Senator Inn, Augusta, Maine

Submitted by: Kathy Jacques
Subject: MeADE Board Meeting
Date: Wednesday, 04/03/2009 3:00PM

Attendees: S. Barth, S. Bouchard, W. Drew, K. Jacques, L. Pelletier, Rena Gels-Birch,
L. Gordon, Mary Fleming, C. Hale, P. Ranucci,

1.Secretary Report: Minutes of 12/06/09 Board meeting approved.
2.Treasurer’s Report: Incoming balance in January 2009 was $29,789.59; income of $3,031.69 from registrations, membership dues. Expenses of $3,092.12 for: audit meeting, Rena, gifts, leadership airfare and annual meeting deposit. In February the check for $5,000 received in error from Lilly was sent back. Web page design fee of $184.42 paid leaving balance of $24,544.42 on 02/28/09. March bank statement has not been received yet but outstanding checks total $1218.00. Wendy reported the Key Bank manager recommended that from the bank’s perspective the treasurer position should be a two year position because of the time and paperwork involved in changing over to a new treasurer.
The manager recommended that both the treasurer and president also have a debit
card. Wendy also reported that she would like to have a timeline from the
conference planning committee about how much and when the monies will be
coming so she knows what the vouchers are for. A motion to accept the treasurers
report was made and seconded.
3.Committee reports:
Conference Planning: Laura report; We have a contract for roughly $25,000 for the October 2009 conference at Point Look-Out just north of Lincolnville. The dates are Sunday October 4, 5 & 6th. The contract covers the conference space, food, (Sunday PM dinner approximately 50 people), beverages and overnight accommodations, (no Monday PM meal). This facility meets the committee’s criteria to try and find a more northern facility. The registration dates will be moved up as the conference is 3 weeks earlier than prior years. The units have kitchenettes that may be desirable for families to accompany conference attendees. After August 21st up to 15% of rooms can be released to the general public without penalty to MeADE if the registrations are not in.
Cabins: 3 BR cabin with full kitchen $275.00/night
2 BR cabin has fridge & microwave $195.00/night
1 BR cabin microwave & fridge $155.00/night.
Laura suggested maybe setting up a process for cabin sharing at registration.
For more information visit pointlookout.com is the website.
On March 11th Susan McPherson reported that approximately half of the letters have gone out to the for-profit exhibitors and the rest to go out soon. Lilly will pay for lunch on Monday. Save the date reminders have gone out in March, and will go again in April with more information on the theme and speakers.
Grant applications will start as soon as most of the speakers and topics are obtained. Brochure and application for CEU’S timelined for July.
Title for the conference is not firm but several are being considered such as: “Achieving Wellness with Diabetes…Integrating Traditional and Complementary Therapies”. >13 strong abstracts have been received and are in process of being reviewed. General Session speakers confirmed to date are: Fred Wolff, LADC, LCPC, TTS-C and Laura Shane-McWhorton PharmD, CDE.
A recommendation to put a “volunteer sign-up sheet” for the registration table & room monitors was made and will be placed in the dining and business meeting room this evening.
Communications & Public Relations: Rena Gels-Birch; meeting with her committee this evening. One of the things they want to work on is promoting the diabetes educators’ brochure, looking at ways to increase membership awareness of these brochures. The MeADE brochures can be ordered from the MeADE website. At this time orders come to Rena’ attention, there is a $3.00 shipping & handling charge. Cost is $20/100 brochures.
There was further discussion about the idea of a MeADE newsletter. Rena mentioned doing a newsletter via e-mail as a “Green” alternative, Sandy Barth suggested doing the first one on paper, there could be information on the conference, the speakers how often to publish, Wendy suggested a “corporate” page where companies can buy space for new products or new drugs. Sandy voiced concerns about committee time contacting potential sponsors. In one of Wendy’s prior chapters they did this, they would announce once a year the deadline to purchase space which voided the need to hunt for sponsors.
Membership: Kathy reported that the membership lists are being reconciled. As of April 4th 2009 meeting we have 116 current paid members. Two attempts to contact membership committee members have been attempted with responses from 2 of the members. Kathy plans to meet with the committee this evening prior to the business meeting.
Legislative: Mary Fleming, Spoke with James Specter legislation specialist at AADE. Mary now on e-mail list for legislative alerts an updates. Mary encourages all MeADE members to be in touch with our Maine representatives as we are our own best advocates. A needs assessment form was completed by Mary and sent back to James at AADE. Mary encourages members to frequent the AADE and ADA websites as it has helpful policy and advocacy links to enable chapters to be involved. Mary also recommended that all RD’s sign up for the free weekly e-newsletter
“On The Pulse”. Legislation for CDE’s to become Medicare providers’ has
been introduced once again. Mary also reported on a legislative Webinar that
was very informative.
Mary would like to have the keynote speaker from this webinar at one of our conferences. Kenneth Moritsugu is from the Johnson & Johnson company and promoting prevention. Mary has also developed a legislative binder that can be passed on to subsequent legislative committee chair persons.
Finance: Wendy Drew; See treasurers report above.
Bylaws: Sandy; reports that the bylaws are now up to date on the MeADE website. The Bylaws committee will meet, get the bylaw change recommendations for electronic voting and changing the term of treasurer to 2 years together and vote on them by July 1st.
Nominating: Louise Pelletier; Lou will be sending out ballots for nominations of next years officers in July. If there are insufficient nominations the committee will start calling members and asking them to serve. The deadline will need to be July 31st in order to meet the 2 month deadline prior to the election. Lou reported that she’d like to have the ballots emailed out by September 1, and returned by September 30. New elected officers will be announced at the Annual Conference.
The Beacon Award: The nominating committee and past recipients
review the Beacon Award nominations and determine the winner.

4.Old Business:
Electronic voting has the advantage of likely better member response, the concern has been loss of voter confidentiality, or one person casting more than one vote. Wendy reported on her Kansas City Chapter procedure which was to have the immediate past president be the one to receive the ballot response emails, print them off, cut the senders name off of the top of the e-mail. When all the names have been cut off and pooled together it would be easy to see if someone voted more than once. AADE Educational & Research Foundation: March 2nd is the application deadline for scholarships. Members may not be aware that this foundation money is available for grants to go to the National Meeting. A motion to send in $250.00 to the foundation was passed unanimously at the January meeting.
Saving Chapter information: Discussion: need to decide what needs to be saved, (such as timelines, thank you notes and letters of inviting speakers, pictures, newsletters), as well as where and how to archive the information. Suggestions at a presidents’ chapter meeting at AADE was using a university or a major city bank. Cindy Hale said that American Dietetics Association saves forms on a CD and pass it on to the next board. It was also suggested that where MeADE chapter is only three years old it would be wise to start saving these materials now before the volume gets out of hand.
Scholarship Program: Board voted to provide two scholarships. One for the Annual AADE conference and one to the Annual MeADE conference. Each time a MeADE member attends a meeting their name is added to a “hat” for a drawing at the January meeting. 2 names would be drawn, for each scholarship; a winner and an alternate. The prize will be a paid Early AADE member rate registration to AADEs’ annual meeting or a paid registration fee to the Annual October MeADE conference. Tickets will be collected January through December. Each Board member and committee chair will have a stack of tickets, and will write the members name on the ticket each time they participate in a committee or board meeting. If the winner cannot attend the annual meeting the alternate has the opportunity. The winners must declare their plan to go or not go to the meeting by the January MeADE membership meeting each year. If neither winner can attend there is no scholarship that year.
Teleconferencing Company: Wendy unable to get a response from the company. She tried to find the per minute charge. She gets a report of the total minutes used/month. We paid $200/1100 minutes last month Cindy Hale reported that other groups have not found better rates. Laura suggested that committee chairs report to Wendy the number of minutes and persons on each conference call.
Strategic Plan:
Sandy Handed out the 2009 Strategic Plan which she suggests is “still a
work in progress”. (See attached).
Sandy reported that on March 2, 209, she, Cindy Hale & Cindy Young
met to discuss the New Instructor Program which is given two times a
year. The three came to the conclusion that MeADE doesn’t have the
resources to completely take over the program and that DPCP is willing to
continue with the program with instructor help from MeADE. Cindy Hale
reported that the DPCP received CDC funding for 5 years but CDC
recommended cutting the budget for the New Instructor Program to
zero. The cost will have to be increased: $200 -$250 per
person was suggested. Sandy reported that they also discussed MeADE
members assisting with speaking requests that come to Cindy at the DPCP
from physician offices and the community. There was discussion about
establishing a way for educators to mentor new educators.
AADE Atlanta, August 5-8, 2009
Sandy will be attending. Wendy hopes to attend if her abstract is accepted.
Silent Auction item discussed to showcase our chapter from Maine.
Discussion of items to send included lobsters, blueberries, LL Bean gift
card, LL Bean canvas bag that has gifts from Maine. Lou and Sandy will
make the purchase to bring for the silent auction.

5.New Business:
AADE initiatives: AADE now an accrediting body approved by Medicare along with ADA and HIS. AADE feels that they will be able to offer more diabetes educator services in more locations at a lower fee. They also are marketing the new data collection software. The fee for the Basic version is Free to AADE members $49 to non-members and the robust version is $79/year. Information is available on the AADE website.

Further discussion: There was discussion about the payment of speaker fees. Wendy raised the question that general session speakers who are MeADE members are being paid more than the MeADE members who are workshop speakers or facilitators. Wendy also expressed her concern that since our Mission and part of the strategic plan is to provide education- she pointed out that the same amount of prep is required for a general or concurrent session. She would like to see MeADE members being paid the same. Meeting time was running out and Sandy tabled the discussion for the next meeting.

No other business- meeting adjourned at 4:30 PM

Upcoming meetings:
July 15, Wednesday- Summer Membership conference call
August 5th-8th: Annual AADE meeting, Atlanta Georgia
October 4-6th, MeADE conference, Point Lookout, Northport, ME.