Save the date for our 95th GPHA Annual Meeting and Conference! We’ll gather April 30-May 2, 2025, on beautiful Jekyll Island, Georgia.
Check this page often for updates on speakers, registration, hotel reservations and more!
Call for Abstracts
Share your expertise with other public health professionals in Georgia by presenting a workshop or poster at the 2025 GPHA Annual Meeting and Conference.
The Conference Planning Committee is accepting abstracts from September 16 – October 18, 2024 at 5 p.m. An abstract submission is required regardless of the presentation format or learning method.
All submissions must be submitted through the Digital Commons portal: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gapha-conference/
You will receive notification of the status of your abstract no later than January 15th, 2025.
The goal of the 2025 Georgia Public Health Association (GPHA) Annual Meeting & Conference is to assemble public health professionals, students, County Board of Health members, and stakeholders for educational opportunities, networking, and partnership development to support the mission and vision of GPHA:
- to advocate for conditions in which all people and communities can be healthy,
- to promote the scientific foundation of public health practice and policy, and
- to assure a continuous voice broadly representing public health in Georgia.
The conference theme is “Public Health Reimagined: Innovation, Collaboration, and Equity.” Participants will receive information, resources, and access to exhibitors to allow them to engage with others engaged in public health practice, explore avenues to protect and promote the health of all people in all communities, promote efforts to achieve equity, and promote policies, systems, and overall community conditions that enable optimal health for all.
Plenary Speakers
We’ve secured our first plenary speaker for the 2025 Conference! We’re excited to welcome Dr. Caree Jackson Cotwright, the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity for the Food and Nutrition Service at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
In this role, Dr. Cotwright leads a whole-of-Department approach to advancing food and nutrition security. She also serves as one of two Departmental representatives on accelerating action on the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health goals to end hunger, improve nutrition and physical activity, and reduce diet-related diseases and disparities and implementing the corresponding National Strategy. Her work includes building public awareness of USDA’s actions to advance food and nutrition security, as well as collaborating and building partnerships with key stakeholders to maximize our reach and impact.
Dr. Cotwright is on leave as an Associate Professor of Nutritional Sciences in the University of Georgia’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences’ Department of Nutritional Sciences. Her research centers on promoting healthy eating among infants through age five-years-old with a particular focus on accelerating health equity among historically underserved populations via community-based participatory research and focusing on developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining best practices and policies in the early child education setting.
Click here to learn more about Dr. Cotwright.
Congratulations to all of our 2024 GPHA Award Winners!
- Al Dohany Community Service Award: Danielle Sayre
- Kathy Milner Health Education and Promotion Award: Mecca Mason
- Jules S. Terry Memorial Award: Valerie Fraley
- Fred Agel Governance Award: Chris Tsavatewa, DSc, MP
- Academic Section Award: Sherry Farr
- Communications Excellence Award: Valerie Crow
- Rosemarie B. Newman Nutrition Extra Mile Award: Lisa Murray
- Administration Outstanding Service Award: Melinda Bryant
- Applied Epidemiologist of the Year Award: Mareike Haaren
- Stancliff Boone Communicable Disease Specialist Award: Marie Paul-David
- Environmental Health Specialist of the Year Award: Gina Smith
- Early Career Environmental Health Specialist of the Year Award: Linda Marrazzo
- J. Patrick O’Neal Safety and Health Preparedness Award: Susan Beckham
- Maggie Kline Nursing Award: Virginia Russell
- Ruth B. Freeman Nursing Award for Population Health: Chrissa Shaffer
- Lillian D. Wald Public Health Nursing Award: Lupita Maria Trejo Lozaro
- Barfield Nursing Award: Kimberly Allen, MS, PhD
- President Award Recipients: Angie Peden, MPH
- Sellars-McCroan Award Recipients: Team Members of Georgia Public Health Laboratories, 2020-2023
Submit Your Presentation Materials
Did you present at the 2024 GPHA Annual Meeting and Conference? Please consider submitting your presentation materials to Digital Commons.
Why submit your presentation? More exposure for your work! Presentations are searchable through Google, and you will receive reports showing how many people have downloaded your presentation.
Digital Commons @ Georgia Southern hosts the official archive of the GPHA Conference, which is available here. We invite you to submit your presentation materials for publication in the archive. To do so, please complete this form and within the form, attach any files you would like to make publicly available. Please note that this is a Google form. If you are not logged into Google, you will need to sign in but you can use any email address. Should you have any difficulty using the form, please contact digitalcommons@georgiasouthern.edu and we will gladly assist you.
Please note: All materials made publicly available are required to include a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. Under this license, end users may share and privately adapt your work, but they must give you credit for it and ask your permission to distribute any adaptations they make or use your work for any commercial purpose. When you send us your materials for posting, you agree to apply the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license to your work.
If you have any questions or concerns about licensing your work, please contact us or indicate this in the form when you submit your materials. Otherwise, we will proceed with posting your materials using this license.
Medicine (CME) Accreditation Statement
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and Policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education through the joint sponsorship of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the Georgia Public Health Association. The APHA is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Designation Statement: The APHA designates this live educational activity for a maximum of 14.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit (s)™.
Nursing (CNE) Accreditation Statement
This nursing continuing professional development activity was approved by the American Public Health Association’s Public Health Nursing Section Approver Unit, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
Health Education (CHES) Statement
Sponsored by the American Public Health Association (APHA), a designated approver of continuing education contact hours (CECH) in health education by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc. This program is designated for Certified Health Education Specialists (CHES®) to receive up to 14.5 total Category I contact education contact hours.