I. Purpose of the HS-L Listserv

1. The purpose of the HSPAC Listserv, heretofore referred as HS-L, is to facilitate expeditious communications between the HSPAC, Chief Professional Officer (CPO), and HSOs. It is intended that communications via the HS-L are to supplement and not to supplant other excellent vehicles for communication, e.g., the HS Reporter and the HSO web site. DCP also maintains a listserv for communications to all categories of Commissioned Officers.

2. The value of the HS-L is the rapidity with which communications may be sent to HSOs: it is virtually instantaneous. Examples of such communications are:

a. Announcements that would not be communicated in a timely fashion via the Reporter, which has a moderately long lead time between submission of articles, editorial review, publication and distribution,

b. Employment opportunities that may be of interest to HSOs, and

c. Solicitations for nominations for awards, e.g., when nominators have been slow in submitting nominations and deadlines are approaching.

1. The HS-L is a Closed listserv. That is, subscribers may not publish materials to the listserv. While some listservs effectively function as online discussion groups, as stated above, the purpose of HS-L is to send communications to subscribing HSOs. This also serves to help avoid abuse of the listserv by those who might try to distribute inappropriate materials, hackers, and the like.

2. The following individuals are authorized to distribute materials via the HS-L listserv:

a. HSPAC Chair

b. CPO for the HSO category

c. The HS-L manager

d. The Chair of the Communications Subcommittee

e. Others as authorized in writing by the HSPAC Chair

1. HSOs are assigned to widely diverse organizations and may subscribe to HS-L with one of many different Email programs. Some Email systems are unable to properly render text which has special formatting characters, e.g., ones which are taken for granted in typical word processing programs such as BOLD and italicized text. Many times, text composed with proportionally space fonts and with the use of tabs for horizontal spacing do not appear at the reader's end as one would expect.

- Many Email programs are unable to handle attachments, e.g., bitmap (a type of picture file) as well as files produced by word processing programs, and

- There are many different word processing programs, such as Word and WordPerfect, in use throughout the Public Health Service. These programs are often not fully compatible; further, many different versions of each word processor are in use.

a. Text shall be composed with a font which has a fixed size, e.g., courier 10 is a common example,

b. No tabs or formatting characters are to be used, e.g., no italicized or bold-faced text,

c. Text shall be composed such that lines are no more than 72 characters per line. Text should be submitted as ASCII text documents with carriage returns at the end of each line. (Most word processors have an option that allows for saving documents as text files.) If text is submitted using another font, it will be re-formatted before distribution according to the above standards, and

d. Do not submit documents that include attachments of any type (pictures, word processing files, etc.).

Instructions for subscribing