1. Federal Focus
A. MCHB Strategic Plan: http://mchb.hrsa.gov/about/stratplan03-07.htm
B. MCHB Goals
C. The MCHB Training Program: http://mchb.hrsa.gov/training/strategic_plan.asp
Strategic Plan (selected text below is from the MCHB Training Program website)
Our vision for the 21st century is that all children, youth, and families will live and thrive in healthy communities served by a quality workforce that helps assure their health and well being.
The MCH Training Program seeks to train the next generation of leaders who will provide or assure the provision of quality services for the MCH population. Quality services for mothers, children and adolescents require professionals who are:
Attuned to the special needs of children, adolescents and children with special health care needs
Trained to provide or assure the provision of interdisciplinary, family-centered, and culturally competent services
Focused on improving the health of the entire population
The goals of the MCH Training Program are as follows:
MCH Competencies
Assure a workforce that possesses the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to meet unique MCH population needs.Workforce Diversity
Prepare and support a diverse MCH workforce that is culturally competent and family centered.Ensuring Interdisciplinary Training
Improve practice through interdisciplinary training in MCH.MCH Leaders
Develop effective MCH leaders.Knowledge to Practice
Generate, translate, and integrate new knowledge to enhance MCH training, inform policy, and improve health outcomes.Collaborating with Others
Develop broad-based support for MCH training
D. CDC Goals, priorities and current activities: http://www.thecrcenter.com/archives/2006/04/10/cdc-goals-for-the-21st-century/
At this website, readers will find the “CDC NOW: Health Protection Goals Fact Sheet.” ( Selected text from the sheet follows)
Goals for the 21st Century
As America has entered a new millennium, new health and safety challenges have emerged:
- Emerging infectious diseases (SARS, monkeypox, pandemic influenza)
- Terrorism
- Environmental threats (hurricanes, wildfires, toxic chemical spills)
- Aging population
- Lifestyle choices (tobacco use, poor nutrition, lack of physical fitness)
CDC is adapting to meet these new challenges. New strategies, new innovations, and new goals bring new focus to the agency's work, allowing CDC to do even more to protect and improve health.
Strategy First: CDC has defined six key strategies to guide its decisions and priorities so that it can achieve the health protection goals:
Health Impact Focus: Align CDC's staff, strategies, goals, investments, and performance to maximize impact on the population's health and safety.
Customer-centricity: Market what people want and need to choose health.
Public Health Research: Create and disseminate the knowledge and innovations people need to protect their health now and in the future.
Leadership: Leverage CDC's unique expertise, partnerships and networks to improve the health system.
Global Health Impact: Extend CDC's knowledge and tools to promote health protection around the world.
Accountability: Sustain people's trust and confidence by making the most efficient and effective use of their investment in CDC.
Health Protection Goals
CDC's new health protection goals address four themes:
- Healthy People in Every Stage of Life
- Healthy People in Healthy Places
- People Prepared for Emerging Health Threats
- Healthy People in a Healthy World
Creating these agency-wide goals has taken time, and the process has greatly benefited from much internal and external input. Now CDC is ready to create the action plans, with measurable objectives and activities to achieve them.
Achieving the Health Protection Goals
Over the last two years, CDC has reorganized its Centers, Institutes and Offices (CIOs) to meet 21st century health and safety threats. CDC now is a more integrated, adaptable, and faster agency. CDC Centers continue to conduct and support the excellent science that drives all the agency's work.
CDC's Coordinating Centers and Offices are improving coordination and networking inside and outside CDC, and will be the home for the Goal Action Plan teams. These teams, led by CDC senior staff, bring together experts from inside and outside the agency to draft measurable objectives and priority actions to achieve health protection goals. The teams will seek input and review from CDC's Division and Center leaders, the Department of Health and Human Services, CDC's Advisory Committees and partners, and the public, before final action plans are approved and budgeted. As always, CDC's program Divisions and Centers will be responsible for planning activities and projects, overseeing their quality, managing them, and measuring their results.
The goals action planning and implementation cycle will align with the federal budget cycle, and CDC will continue to be guided by Congressional intent to be sure that categorical disease dollars target the appropriate activities. Over time, these health protection goals will allow CDC to objectively measure and clearly demonstrate the impact of its health protection activities, and can help inform the public, the administration, Congress, partners and stakeholders about the state of the public's health.
2. Fair Health Movement / Place Matters
A. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Health Policy Institute: http://www.jointcenter.org/index.php
Mission: The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies informs and illuminates the nation's major public policy debates through research, analysis, and information dissemination in order to: improve the socioeconomic status of black Americans and other minorities; expand their effective participation in the political and public policy arenas; and promote communications and relationships across racial and ethnic lines to strengthen the nation's pluralistic society.
B. The Health Policy Institute: www.jointcenter.org/healthpolicy/index.php
The mission of the Joint Center Health Policy Institute (HPI) is to ignite a “Fair Health” movement that gives people of color the inalienable right to equal opportunity for healthy lives.
3. Moving Ahead: Preconception Health and Health Care
A. MCH Journal : “Preconception Care: Science, Practice, Challenges and Opportunities”
http://www.springer.com/west/home/public+health?SGWID=4-40467-70-35753565-0
The MCH Journal is described as follows:
Maternal and Child Health Journal is the first exclusive forum to advance the scientific and professional knowledge base of the maternal and child health (MCH) field. This bimonthly provides peer-reviewed papers addressing the following areas of MCH practice, policy, and research:
MCH epidemiology, demography, and health status assessment
Innovative MCH service initiatives
Implementation of MCH programs
MCH policy analysis and advocacy
MCH professional development.
Exploring the full spectrum of the MCH field, Maternal and Child Health Journal is an important tool for practitioners as well as academics in public health, obstetrics, gynecology, prenatal medicine, pediatrics, and neonatology.
Sponsors include the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP), the Association of Teachers of Maternal and Child Health (ATMCH), and CityMatCH.
Abstracted/Indexed in: CINAHL Database, Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature, Current Contents / Social & Behavioral Sciences, EMBASE, Index Medicus/MEDLINE, Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)
B. Additional Links from the CDC's National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/preconception/links.htm
(Links are within the following categories)
Preconception Care Guidelines Links:
Preconception Supplement
International
Family-Centred Maternity and Newborn Care: National Guidelines for Preconception Care ( Canada )
Guidelines for Preconceptional/Prenatal Screening and Testing
Colombian Sexual and Preproductive Health Action Plan (SRHAP), 2005-2015
Domestic
Before Pregnancy - March of Dimes
Guidelines for Preconception and Prenatal Care Following Bariatric Surgery
E-2.12 Genetic Counseling, American Medical Association
Perinatal Foundation
Perinatal Foundation Provider Guide
Women's health
4. Navigating the Institutional Review Board Process: Assuring Ethical Public Health Practice
A. HHS Regulations for Registration of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Independent Ethics Committee (IEC) from the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/assurances/
B. U.S. Food and Drug Administrattion Information Sheet Guidances
for Institutional Review Boards, Clinical Investigators, and Sponsors
http://www.fda.gov/oc/ohrt/irbs/
C. Definition: Institutional Review Board (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_Review_Board
An institutional review board/independent ethics committee (IRB/IEC) (also known as ethical review board) is a group that has been formally designated to review and monitor biomedical and behavioral research involving human subjects . In accordance with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and HHS regulations, an IRB has the authority to approve, require modifications in (to secure approval), or disapprove research. An IRB performs critical oversight functions for research conducted on human subjects that are scientific, ethical, and regulatory.
In the United States , IRBs are mandated by the Research Act of 1974 , which defines IRBs and requires them for all research that receives funding, directly or indirectly, from what was the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare at the time, and is now the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). IRBs are themselves regulated by the Office for Human Research Protections ( OHRP ) within HHS. IRBs were developed in direct response to research abuses earlier in the twentieth century. (see Wikipedia for additional commentary and links.
5. CityMatCH DaTA Institute: http://www.citymatch.org
Translating data to action is essential for making a measurable difference in the health and well-being of women, children and families. Increasing the data use skills of public health organizations and leaders is crucial to meeting this challenge.
The DaTA Institute model promotes the translation of data to action. The three points of the triangle represent the three core domains of effective data use.
• Data: Data analysis skills are essential for ensuring accurate baseline and outcome measures.
• Program: Planning, monitoring and evaluating skills are essential for creating/monitoring effective programs.
• Policy: Decision making and data strategy skills are necessary for creating evidence-based policy.
Public health practitioners working in all three corners of the triangle need leadership, systems thinking and communication skills to be effective translators. In maternal and child health, effective translation of data cannot happen without incorporating public health values such as cultural competence, social justice and prevention. See website for more information.
6. Partners in Program Planning for Adolescent Health (PIPPAH-3 Initiative) :
HRSA-06-084 PARTNERS IN PROGRAM PLANNING FOR ADOLESCENT HEALTH (PPPAH)
PURPOSE: This Initiative contributes to the improvement of adolescent health, safety and well-being by promoting a multidisciplinary, comprehensive adolescent health agenda among professionals who work with adolescents and their families. The Initiative includes two broad categories of program effort: 1) Strengthening the capacity of national professional membership associations to address adolescent health comprehensively within their respective fields; and 2) Enhancing the ability of grantee organizations to promote adolescent health at a national level through participation in a consortium of all PIPPAH grantees, which encourages interdisciplinary collaboration through shared expertise in addressing complex issues, using a youth development framework, and jointly contributing to the efforts of State adolescent health programs. Grantee organizations will focus their efforts on the following: Elevating national, State and community focus on, and commitment to, the health, safety and well-being of adolescents and their families; increasing adolescents' access to quality health care, including comprehensive general health, oral health, mental health, and substance abuse prevention and treatment services; improving health and safety outcomes in areas defined by the 21 critical adolescent health objectives of Healthy People 2010; and eliminating health disparities among adolescents.
A. Background Description from AMCHP:
http://www.amchp.org/policy/NNSAHC2006mtg/PlenaryPIPPH.pdf
B: National Initiative to Improve Adolescent Health by the Year 2010
or “The National Initiative,” or “NIIAH 2010,” grew out of the efforts of Healthy People 2010, and is uniquely positioned to elevate national and state focus on the health, safety, and well-being of adolescents and young adults (aged 10–24 years), and to foster cooperation among different partners, including states, for attaining all 21 Critical Health Objectives for adolescents and young adults.
http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/AdolescentHealth/NationalInitiative/index.htm
C. National Initiative Partner Resources Database:
http://nahic.ucsf.edu/index.php/partner_resources/
D. 21 Critical Adolescent Health Objectives:
