Savannah River Site Health Effects Subcommittee (SRSHES) Meeting

Final Meeting Minutes - January 10, 2002

Report on the DFO/Chair Meeting.
Dr. Bustos announced that a meeting was convened in May 2001 with all HES DFOs, chairs and senior agency staff members to review the evaluation findings and recommendations. He presented comments SRSHES made on the evaluation report and particularly pointed out areas of disagreement to the attendees. For example, several evaluation findings did not apply to SRSHES; the data were insufficient; some evaluation findings were inconsistent with SRSHES responses; and the sample did not accurately represent SRSHES membership. However, the other HES chairs agreed with the evaluation findings.

The attendees extensively discussed the evaluation recommendation for each HES to establish grounds rules to govern its operation. Dr. Bustos announced that he would appoint a workgroup to undertake this task. The SRSHES ground rules would specifically focus on responsibility, inter-communication, and the process to reach consensus. However, he first opened the floor for each member and nominee to provide feedback on this issue. The deliberations are outlined below:

• Continue to allow Roberts Rules of Order and general rules of civility to govern the SRSHES operation, behavior, decision-making, mutual respect, process to reach consensus, and implementation of activities; no other written guidelines are necessary.
  
• Provide an open forum for SRSHES to speak freely due to the diversity of members.
  
• Eliminate distractions while meetings are in session, such as extraneous conversations and cellular telephones.
  
• Adhere to agenda times for presentations, discussion periods, breaks, and lunch recesses; use an internal parliamentarian or facilitator to ensure that meeting schedules are followed.
  
• Consider expanding meetings from 1.5 days or decreasing the number of presentations to provide ample time for discussions of important issues.
  
• Clearly define the mission, purpose and expectations of SRSHES in relation to CDC; ensure that agendas are developed to focus on and be consistent with these goals; provide regular refresher courses on these issues for current members.
  
• Clearly define “consensus” from the agencies’ perspective and outline the process for SRSHES to provide consensus advice.
  
• Allow SRSHES members with more institutional memory to serve as mentors to new members.
  
• Make presentations and structure discussions to ensure that new members, guests or other members of the public can understand the material regardless of educational background or level of knowledge about SRSHES, i.e., provide a brief history, define acronyms and distribute background materials.
  
• Ensure that members provide consistent information when communicating with the public or allow the chair or another member to serve as the voice for SRSHES.
  
• Reserve afternoons prior to SRSHES meetings for workgroup meetings.

Mr. Renard made some follow-up comments to the deliberations. Of the 17 evaluation recommendations, nine were addressed to the agencies. NCEH will make stronger efforts in the future to define the role of SRSHES and clearly identify areas for which consensus advice is needed on a more frequent basis. NCEH will also attempt to facilitate logistical arrangements for workgroup meetings prior to SRSHES meetings when requested. Overall, Mr. Renard was proud that the members have shown respect to each other and the agencies. In this area, SRSHES serves as a model for all HESs. He was confident that SRSHES would continue to make progress. He asked the nominees to complete the evaluation forms for the orientation session.

Dr. Bustos summarized the deliberations as follows: Roberts Rules of Order will continue to serve as the SRSHES ground rules with no additional written guidelines. However, Roberts Rules of Order will be applied during meetings with more rigor and modified to incorporate suggestions made by the members and nominees. Since the members generally agreed with these key points, Dr. Bustos saw no need to appoint a new workgroup.