Message from the President, June 2014

Message from the President: Mindy Renfro
Greetings Everyone!
We hope that this newsletter finds you all enjoying the arrival of Montana’s beautiful spring and
summer seasons, good health, and vacation plans for the near future. For all of you who were able to
join us in Missoula in April for MGS 2014, it was wonderful to see you and we trust that you enjoyed the
conference and networking opportunities. For those of you unable to join us, we will look forward to
seeing you for MGS 2015: Insights in Alzheimer’s disease to be held in April of 2015 in Helena. The exact
date and venue to be announced in the near future.
Our goals for 2014-2015 were determined by the membership at MGS 2014 and are far-reaching and
well-focused to assure our greatest education of health care providers to support healthy older adults
across Montana. Your Board of Directors is hard at work to achieve the following:
1. Plan MGS 2015:
a. Topic/focus area:
Insights into Alzheimer’s disease
b. Location:
Helena
c. Chair of planning committee: Michelle Hastings
d. Local coordinator:
Karen Keith
e. Goal: Enlighten us all on new research and approaches in the management of
Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
f. Collaboration: We are striving to collaborate with other state aging organizations to
bolster content, networking, and attendance. The Board is trying to plan our annual
conference to coordinate with another aging conference to share expenses and
attendees.
g. Membership engagement:
Please contact us if you live in or near Helena and would
like to volunteer to work on the conference planning committee.
2. Rebrand and modernize MGS’s logo, website, and internet presence.
a. Website: MGS’s website will be “housed” online in the UM Rural Institute’s MonTECH
website as a separate group of web pages. We will forward traffic from the
www.montanagerontologysociety.org web address to its new address automatically.
The new website should be ready to go online the end of this summer. The website is
being developed as a student project under the supervision of the MonTECH IT staff at
no cost to MGS. Select board members will be able to update pages as needed.
b. Logo: Logo design is costly. At this time, we have not engaged any graphic designers to
update the MGS logo. This may wait until the website has been developed and
updated.
c. Newsletter: Newsletters will continue to be printed and mailed for the near future. It is
the intention of the Board to move to an electronic newsletter via -mail blasts to save
the costs of printing and postage. If this would present a hardship to you, please notify
us at [email protected]
3. Increase membership and visibility of the MGS organization
a. Interdisciplinary efforts:
We hope to reach many groups of a variety of
professionals who work with our older adults across Montana. Please let us know if you
would be willing to help with outreach to your professional organization(s) and/or
student programs.
b. Joint conferences: Linking our conferences to those of other groups will help to increase
our visibility and outreach. If you work with other conferences, please consider speaking
with us about collaborative efforts.
c. Website: Following updating of our website, we will take steps to increase traffic
through our website. If you would like to link to our site, please let us know.
The Board of Directors will hold their annual face-to-face meeting/retreat this year on August 22-23,
2014 in Helena. If you have items that you would like us to add to the agenda, please feel free to email
them to me. My contact information is below.
Thank you for your membership and engagement in MGS. We would not exist without you and your
input.
Best,
Mindy :)
Mindy Renfro, PhD, DPT, GCS, CPH
President, MGS 2014-2015
Contact information:
Montana Adaptive Equipment Program (MAEP)
MonTECH/ Rural Institute
University of Montana
700 SW Higgins Suite 250
Missoula, MT 59803
Phone: (406) 243-2841
Email: [email protected]

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