Merger

Dear NPAS Members:

The board of the National Physical Activity Society voted this week to move forward with the proposed merger into a new collaborative entity including the current National Physical Activity Plan Alliance and the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity. Both NPAPA’s and NCPPA’s boards have voted to move forward this month, as well.

A transition plan details forming governance structure, strategic planning, operations, and communications. The next step is establishing an operational home. The American Heart Association has volunteered to house the effort from its DC office. That agreement will need to be worked out.

The three existing organizations agree a “soft launch” to do business as one organization should be in place by end of January 2020. Closing out NPAS will take some time, and we will communicate with members when major milestones take place. Everyone will have at least two notifications via the membership list (you can still join) when a process is in place for the new entity’s mailing list and communications.

Meanwhile, our scheduled webinars will continue. We will establish a schedule for closing social media accounts. We encourage members to download resources from the website for your professional needs. Everything from the past three years is available on the public portion of the web site—no log-in needed. Webinar recordings are on the webinar hosting site, which we hope to transfer to the new entity.

We would like to thank all the members who provided input when we circulated the merger proposal. We held two GoToMeeting sessions with about a dozen people attending, and we received written comments from many more via the Google Form and email. The primary concerns of individual membership, certification, and professional home have been conveyed to the merger group, and we will continue to bring these up during transition.

Stay tuned; we will be back in touch as we proceed in this exciting new direction!

Pam Eidson, MEd, PAPHS

NPAS Executive Director

Atlanta, Georgia

Alan Beck, PhD, CHES, ACSM-CEP, EP, CIFT, CPT

NPAS President

Prevention Research Center

Washington University in St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri