Newsletter
Volume 30| 2007 | Number 2
ABA of Brazil
By Dr. Martha Hübner
The Brazilian ABA´s chapter is the Association of Psychotherapy and Behavioral Medicine (ABPMC), which was founded on November, 4th, 1991. Its objective is to congregate psychologists, researchers, professors, and students who are interested in the scientific and technological development in behavior analysis.
BPMC, the Brazilian ABA chapter, currently has 4,850 names registered in its mailing list. Each year for the past five years, 1,600 people have attended its convention, which typically occurs in the month of September. In 2004, ABPMC had the honor to organize the second international meeting of ABA, which 2,420 people attended. Today, ABPMC has 933 members that have paid for 2006 membership.
The ABPMC´s members come from all over Brazil, from north to south of the country. Many regional meetings have been held over the past six years, with around 400 people attending each one. We have the Center-West Region meeting and meetings in the State of São Paulo (city of Campinas and São Carlos), São Luis State, Goiania, Bauru, Rio Verde, Vitoria, and Salvador, among others.
For the years of 2006 and 2007, the ABPMC central office is located in Brasília, the capital of the country. According to its bylaws, every two years the chapter’s directory board has to be changed. The ABPMC central office has already been located in the cities of Campinas (SP), Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Londrina.
Since its foundation, ABPMC has organized an annual meeting where members and interested people present papers and promote the most important advances in many areas of behavior analysis. In 2006, for the XV Annual Meeting 1,108 people came to the national conference that was held in Brasília, from the 14th to the 17th of September.
The most relevant works are published in a book series named Sobre Comportamento e Cognição (About Behavior and Cognition), which has already published 16 volumes.
Since 1999, ABPMC also publishes a regular journal called Revista Brasileira de Terapia Comportamental e Cognitiva (Brazilian Journal of Behavior and Cognitive Therapy), which is nationally recognized and very well received by the academic community. In 2007, the Brazilian ABA chapter will publish an article in this journal (which is already accepted) describing the relationship among scientific associations in Brazil, which includes the history of ABPMC and ABA, as well as the foundation of our chapter. Concurrent with this initiative, behavior analysts have been discussing better political ways of representation of the area among government institutions, in order to increase the power and the inclusion of the area in the mainstream of the decisions that support to the development of research and the diffusion of the knowledge produced by behavior analysis.
This year, the XVI annual meeting of ABPMC will be from September 25th to 28th. The president of the association is Wander C.M.P. Silva and the president of the annual meeting is Gilberto Hazaña de Godoy. To submit papers to the convention or to get more information about it, go to www.abpmc.org.br.
The Brazilian ABA chapter (ABPMC) will be very honored with your presence! Fred Keller and Dona Francis, Jack Michael, Charles Catania, Murray and Rita Sidman, William McIlvane, William Dube, Mark Galizio, Douglas Greer, Maria Malott, Richard Malott, Jay Moore, Carol Pilgrim, Masaya Sato, Richard Serna, Ernest and Julie Vargas, John Austin, Sigrid Glenn, and Kate Saunders, among many others, have already visited us and, as far as we know, they just loved it. Come and join us at the XVI ABPMC convention!