FOUNDING
The Southern Association of Allied Health Deans at Academic Health Centers (“the Association) adopted its inaugural bylaws in 1979, establishing as its purpose to “serve as an informal consortium to share resources, ideas and data” among its members. The initial membership criteria were defined to include “chief allied health administrators (deans or directors) in allied health units (colleges, schools, divisions) recognized as part of Academic Health Centers, as defined by eligibility in the Association of Academic Health Centers, located in the jurisdiction of the Southern Regional Education Board jurisdiction,” which encompasses 14 southern states. By 1980, 11 states and 22 institutions were represented, and Howard Suzuki of the University of Florida took the reins as the Association’s first executive director. The Association later obtained 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in 1991.
1980s: ACCREDITATION DEBATES
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the Association was heavily focused on the issue of programmatic accreditation and the role of professional associations in that process. Through a series of discussions, position papers, and other efforts outside of the Association’s regular meetings, members sought to push back against the influence of professional associations for more than a decade.
As one early position paper described the issue, academic health centers have obligations not only to professional associations but also to their parent institutions and to the public. However, the heavy involvement of professional associations in the accreditation process for many programs had reached “a point of crisis” by the early 1980s. As the Association viewed it, the professional organizations were attempting to “dictate academic policy to educational institutions” by imposing certain requirements around degrees and credentials, behavior that was “totally unethical and dictatorial.” In conversations with one of the lead accrediting bodies, the Committee on Allied Health Education and Accreditation, Association members felt that CAHEA was “unsympathetic with the concerns.”
Compounding the problem was the cost and effort associated with the accreditation process. Another noted the many ways that accreditation used up staff time and required duplicative documentation, and made recommendations to streamline the process. With the number of programs to be accredited at many institutions, this process required significant resources.
In 1984, the Association planned Project Move AHEAD (which stood for Allied Health Education Accreditation Demonstration) to pilot the concept of school-wide accreditation instead of individual programmatic accreditation. Association members conducted a series of pilot site visits to determine whether they could identify alternative ways to ensure programmatic quality. While the project team ultimately did not feel that they were able to prove their hypothesis, the experiment provided more opportunity to meet with other associations and stakeholders to further debate about accreditation.
The issues around accreditation came to a head in the early 1990s. Several professional associations including the American Occupational Therapy Association decided to leave CAHEA, moves which the Association frequently supported. In 1993, the Association considered a resolution to highlight issues around the accreditation process and support the National Policy Board for Higher Education Institutional Accreditation. The Association also made plans to work with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to incorporate accreditation of allied health education programs into SACS’ institutional review process.
Ultimately, in 1994, COPA and CAHEA dissolved and formed into a new agency, the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs. Following this, the accreditation issue largely fell from the Association’s regular agendas.
1990s: NAVIGATING SHIFTS IN POLICY, ECONOMY, AND TECHNOLOGY
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Association’s work on accreditation took place in a shifting public policy landscape. Many of the issues raised during debates about the accreditation process came from a backdrop of increased financial constraints facing the Association’s member institutions. As state appropriations for higher education waned in this period, the deans faced greater pressures to shore up their financial resources. Minutes from a 1992 meeting described the challenges of “coming to grips with the outer limits of support allied health colleges can raise on their own behalf” and “the trials and tribulations of producing academic output in an environment that is focused heavily upon income generation through practice.”
Amid this landscape, the Association spent more time on policy issues in the early 1990s. One meeting featured a representative of the U.S. Department of Education to discuss their accreditation concerns. The Association held its first Congressional reception around the same time and explored the ideas of hosting regular receptions and creating a legislative agenda. Among the initial ideas discussed were position statements on loan forgiveness and minority student capitation.
The policy and economic landscape shifted further following the attempted Clinton Administration healthcare reforms of 1994 and the healthcare industry shift toward managed care organizations. The Association discussed these concerns, especially managed care, at meetings throughout the mid-1990s to understand implications for allied health education. These discussions raised issues ranging from the impacts of managed care on fields like physical therapy to the need for institutions to look outward to their communities to new approaches for instructional and training activities.
Another major shift of the mid-1990s period was technological. As early as 1992, meeting attendees were remarking on the potential of BITNET and the Internet to impact how education was delivered. The Association devoted a portion of one 1994 meeting to discuss distance learning initiatives taking place among the members, sensing that technology was opening new possibilities to meet allied health workforce needs. While discussions in some meetings raised concerns about instructional quality and the accreditation process for distance learning programs, many members nonetheless recognized the significance of these new programs. One forward-looking presentation from 1995 suggested to Association members that “Physical assets are not important when the campus is a virtual one.”
2010s: CONTINUED EVOLUTION
Few records document the Association’s activities from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s, but the Association has continued to remain active. Over the years, membership has grown to include institutions in Missouri and Puerto Rico, and as of 2019, 27 institutions from 15 states are represented in the Association.
Membership continues to change and evolve. The 2021 Association bylaws changed the definition of an “academic health center”—a key component of membership eligibility—from one based on membership in the Association of Academic Health Centers. Now, the definition includes any “institution of higher education that has an allopathic or osteopathic medical school and an allied health or health professions unit (e.g., school, department, or division), and owns or is affiliated with at least one teaching hospital or health system.” Other conversations have raised the question of whether membership could be expanded to include assistant or associate deans in the Association’s meetings.
The content of Association meetings has also shifted over time. Keynotes and guest speakers covering issues in health care or academic administration are much more common on meeting agendas now than in earlier days of the Association. The Association’s activities have expanded in other ways as well, such as the 2018 creation of a scholarship program for students at member institutions.
One aspect of the Association that seems to have remained constant since its founding is the community among its members. Open roundtable discussions of challenges and successes have been a consistent component of Association meetings since the early days of the group, as have social outings and excursions at host locations, from museum tours to boat rides to local festivals. Over more than 40 years, the Association has provided a continued space for its members to support and learn from one another.
