November 2008
Public Health Survival: Leadership
in a Falling Market airs December 15
The economic downturn is real. We can anticipate
a significant decline in revenues available for public health programs
at the global, national, state, and local levels. At same time, the
number of persons adversely impacted by this economic decline will
significantly rise, increasing the demands on public health at all
levels.
“Public Health Survival: Leadership
in a Falling Market” begins
a national webcast series linking public health leaders, practitioners,
and those in government and health who will be affected by this recession.
Produced by the Public Health Leadership Institute and the North
Carolina Institute for Public Health, the first program airs Monday,
December 15 as a webcast at 2:00-3:00 pm Eastern Time
A panel of public health leaders will talk about the issues surrounding
operating public health systems in a down economy, share illustrative
experiences, emphasize ways to anticipate and measure influences,
and identify new strategies and networks to continue the work of
public health.
Panelists include Dr. James
S. Marks, senior vice-president of the Health Group at the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation, Dr. Leah
Devlin, state health director of North Carolina, Robert M. (Bobby)
Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County
and City Health Officials, and Dr. Ed Baker, director,
and Gene Matthews, senior fellow, both with the NC Institute for
Public Health, the service and outreach arm of the Gillings School
of Global Public Health.
According to panelist and program organizer Gene Matthews, “It
is imperative that we in public health act immediately with vision
and clarity to anticipate this challenge of falling financial support
and yet a greater demand for our services. I think we can use our
reservoir of leadership and evidence-based approaches to develop
the partnerships necessary to protect our communities’ health.”
Matthews, former chief counsel
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, feels that times
of crisis like this economic recession provide an opportunity to
reinvent public health, study what has worked in the past, strengthen
advocacy and communication skills, and forge new partnerships
and networks.
For more information about the webcast or to register, see www.sph.unc.edu/nciph.
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29th Annual Occupational Safety and
Health Winter Institute
TradeWinds Island Grand
St. Pete Beach, Florida
February 9-13, 2009
Presented by the North Carolina Occupational
Safety and Health Education and Research Center at the University
of North Carolina, the annual Occupational Safety and Health Winter
Institute is designed to provide practical information and a forum
for the exchange of ideas among participants with widely diverse
backgrounds. The interdisciplinary focus makes the institute a unique
offering in continuing professional education and development.
The institute is designed for industrial hygienists, safety personnel,
occupational physicians, occupational health nurses, managers, supervisors,
personnel specialists, union health and safety professionals, and
others with the responsibility of providing a safe and healthy work
environment. Approximately 30 courses dealing with a wide range of
occupational safety and health and environmental issues are offered
at each institute. Courses generally range from one to five days
in length.
Three Technician Certificate
Programs are offered through the Winter Institute. Each program has
been designed to recognize those individuals who have completed a
selected set of requirements outlined for Industrial Hygiene, Safety,
or Environmental Technician. Upon successful completion of specific
required courses and elective courses, a program certificate and
plaque will be awarded.
If you would like to receive information or speak to someone about
the programs, please call toll free (888)235-3320, or see details
on the website www.sph.unc.edu/osherc.
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First round of grantees announced
by Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities and Active Living By Design
Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities, a national
program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), announces
their first grantees. Focusing on systems, policies, and environmental
strategies to support healthy eating and active living, especially
among children who are at highest risk for obesity, Healthy Kids,
Healthy Communities will work with communities to help them increase
opportunities for physical activity and improve access to affordable
healthy foods for children and families.
Directed by Active Living By Design,
Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities is a five-year, $44-million initiative.
It is RWJF’s largest
investment to date in community-based solutions to childhood obesity
and will eventually fund and provide technical assistance to 70 communities
across the country. The initiative will advance RWJF’s efforts
to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015.
Leading site awards in this round
of funding are Baldwin Park, CA, Central Valley, CA, Chicago, IL,
Columbia, MO, Louisville, KY, Oakland CA, Seattle, WA, Somerville,
MA, and Washington, DC. The sites were selected based on their
demonstrated leadership and success in achieving policy and environmental
changes related to active living and healthy eating, as well as
their readiness to implement broader scale changes.
Call for Proposals
RWJF is also releasing a call for proposals (CFP) for the second
round of funding for approximately 60 additional Healthy Kids, Healthy
Communities grantees. Partnerships from across the country and in
U.S. territories are eligible to apply. Special emphasis will be
given to applicants from communities in 15 states where need is particularly
high (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia). Grants of up to $360,000 over
four years will be awarded. The deadline for brief proposals is February
3, 2009 at 3:00 pm Eastern Time. Go to www.healthykidshealthycommunities.org to
download the CFP and obtain additional information.
The Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities
national program office is housed at Active Living By Design (ALBD),
part of the North Carolina Institute for Public Health at the UNC
Gillings School of Global Public Health in Chapel Hill. ALBD was
established in 2001 as a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation. It creates community-led change by working with local
and national partners to build a culture of active living and healthy
eating.
For more information about these programs,
go to www.healthykidshealthycommunities.org and www.activelivingbydesign.org.
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Management Academy teams continue
to make things happen
Paula Black, a personal health services administrator
in North Carolina’s
Gaston County Health Department, emailed us recently. “The
Highland Health Center is right on schedule—we are currently
finalizing the clinic designs with the architects and beginning to
get a few quotes for large equipment. We anticipate our Grand Opening
summer 2010.”
Black was a member of a community team that attended
the Institute’s
Management Academy for Public Health (MAPH), a nine-month program
combining onsite retreats with team “homework” to complete
a business plan addressing a local public health need.
The Highland Community in the city of Gastonia
is underserved with no clinical practices and a lack of convenient
public transportation. One-third of its population uninsured. Health
indicators (teen pregnancy, low birthweight babies, infant mortality,
diabetes, heart disease, and STDs) are all at above average rates.
The MAPH team researched and developed a business plan
for the creation of the Highland Health Center to provide primary
care, obstretric/gynecological care and family planning, urgent care,
radiology, and behavioral health sciences.
The team estimated that non-urgent emergency room
visits would decrease by 10%. Screenings in the plan
would also help reduce those poor health indicators.
“MAPH gave our team the tools and resources to create the
business plan that will work and make our project successful, while
bringing access to health care to an underserved area of Gaston County,” says
Black. MAPH promotes collaboration, and Black points out that in
addition to the Health Department, Gaston Family Health Services,
Inc., Gaston Memorial Hospital, faith-based organizations, the Department
of Social Services, and elected officials have also been part of
the process.
Success breeds success. This year another
Gaston County Health Department team is eyeing a blue ribbon for
its MAPH business plan. The Making a Successful Teen (M.A.S.T.)
Program will provide family planning services, prenatal care and
education, and child development education for Gaston County teens.
Core clinical services will include pre-conception
counseling and family planning services, pregnancy testing and
counseling, and comprehensive prenatal care services and education
geared to the special needs of the teenage client. In addition,
the program will provide a social worker and maternity care coordination
services to facilitate the referral to and communication with other
community resources needed to assure that all of the teen client’s
psychosocial, medical, and educational needs are being met. Services
will be provided during after-school hours, at the newly operating
Highland Health Center, the area of Gaston County with the highest
teen pregnancy rate and greatest social and economic barriers to
care.
To learn more about how your
health agency can tackle a key problem with a team at the Management
Academy, go to www.maph.unc.edu.
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New online course provides training
for preparedness coordinators at NC local health departments
Preparedness coordinators (PCs) are responsible
for improving the capacity of their local health departments to plan
for and respond to public health emergencies. In North Carolina,
there is no standardized training for the PC position, and many PCs
do not have a background in preparedness when they begin the job.
To address this gap, nurses from North Carolina’s Public Health
Regional Surveillance Teams collaborated with the NC Center for Public
Health Preparedness to develop and pilot an online training course
for PCs.
The competency-based course was designed to provide a comprehensive
overview of the PC role and responsibilities and to offer a forum
for PCs to share experiences. The eight-week course features online
lectures, activities, and interactive discussion boards for each
of six modules focused on key PC functions: planning, training, exercising,
serving as a liaison, and communicating with internal and external
partners. To promote exchange of lessons learned, veteran PCs serve
as mentors for course participants by moderating discussion boards
and answering questions via email or telephone.
Twenty-one PCs began the pilot course in August 2008; 15 completed
all six modules. Participants completed an end-of-course evaluation
in October 2008. Among respondents (n=12; 80% response rate), all
rated the course as excellent (50%) or very good (50%) and all would
recommend the course to other PCs.
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Institute launches new public
health preparedness research center
Evaluation and improvement of key components of North Carolina’s
emergency readiness is the focus of a new North Carolina Public Health
Preparedness Systems Research Center. The North Carolina Institute
for Public Health of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
has been awarded a grant totaling more than $8.5 million to create
the center.
The award was made by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention’s
Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency
Response.
NCIPH Director Ed Baker says, “North Carolina is seen as a
laboratory for practice research due to its innovative public health
preparedness surveillance and response systems,” one of the
reasons he feels is behind securing this grant. He added, “What
will come out of this center will improve the quality of preparedness
and response to all hazards, from hurricanes to contagious disease
to suspected terrorist acts.”
Pia MacDonald, PhD, MPH, director of the
NC Center for Public Health Preparedness and research assistant professor,
UNC Department of Epidemiology, will serve as director of the new
center as well as principal investigator of one of the center’s
research projects. Carol Gunther-Mohr, currently a research associate
with the NC Center for Public Health Preparedness, has been named
program manager.
The center will be a cooperative effort
among researchers from UNC, NC State University, the University of
Arkansas, the University of Kentucky, and other organizations as
well as public health practitioners from the NC Division of Public
Health and local health departments. The center’s four research
projects are as follows:
Accreditation and public health preparedness
North Carolina leads the nation in creation of the first mandatory
local public health accreditation program. As a result, the state
is uniquely positioned to study the relationship of local public
health agency accreditation and public health systems. This project
will address the question, “Is an accredited local health department
an important factor in community preparedness?” The principal
investigator for this project is Glen Mays, PhD, MPH, professor and
chair, Department of Health Policy and Management, Fay W. Boozman
College of Public Health, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Mary Davis, DrPH, NCIPH director of evaluation services, will serve
as co-principal investigator.
Surveillance systems
Surveillance systems are central to public health preparedness.
Over recent years, North Carolina has invested over $100 million
in systems designed to improve the timeliness and accuracy of disease
reporting. This project will address the overall question, “How can North
Carolina’s surveillance systems be improved to enhance public
health preparedness?” Anna Waller, ScD, research associate
professor, UNC Department of Emergency Medicine is the principal
investigator for this project and Pia MacDonald, PhD, MPH, will serve
as co-principal investigator.
Public health regional response
North Carolina’s Public Health Regional Surveillance Teams
(PHRSTs) are responsible not only for surveillance but also for planning
and for coordinating and mobilizing regional response to public health
threats and emergencies. This model for regional response is recognized
as a best practice in public health preparedness in a RAND Corporation
report. This project will address the question, “How does North
Carolina’s regional response system work now and how can it
be improved to enhance future public health preparedness?” Pia
MacDonald, PhD, MPH, will serve as principal investigator for this
project and Lou Turner, DrPH, Section Chief for Preparedness, Medical
Examiner and Laboratory, NC Division of Public Health will be co-principal
investigator.
NC Health Alert Network
The objective of this project is to develop optimization and simulation
models to support the operation of the NC Health Alert Network (NCHAN).
The question, “How can NCHAN be optimized to ensure efficient,
effective response and sustainable public health preparedness and
service?” will be addressed using strategies from systems engineering.
The principal investigator for this project is Julie Ivy, PhD, assistant
professor and Edward P. Fitts Faculty Fellow in Health Systems Engineering,
Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
at NC State University. Dr. Ed Baker serves as co-principal investigator.
Each research project will disseminate their
findings regarding North Carolina’s public health preparedness
systems to a national audience in order to enhance preparedness and
response systems in the state and across the country.
In addition to these four-year research projects, the new North Carolina
Public Health Preparedness Systems Research Center will award funds
for several one-year pilot projects by new investigators to support
growth and innovation in this new field of interdisciplinary research.
Contact Carol Gunther-Mohr at cgm@email.unc.edu for
more information.
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From
the director
Following a historic election in this country,
amid a dark economic climate, the next year or two of turbulent times
will be challenging for public health. We in the Institute are committed
to supporting the practice of public health through this unprecedented
period. As part of this commitment, we are inaugurating a series
of national discussions targeted at public health leaders throughout
the country. I urge you to join us for the start of this series with “Public
Health Survival: Leadership in a Falling Market”. The December
15 program, with an excellent panel, is described elsewhere in
this newsletter.
Recently, we were awarded a five-year,
$8.3 million grant from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention
to establish the Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center
(PERRC) to study the North Carolina public health preparedness
system. Read
the full story. The Gillings School of Global Public Health is
known for its dedication to research and we are pleased to be involved
in a center that recognizes and analyzes North Carolina preparedness
activities.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
has similarly chosen the NC Institute for Public Health in partnership
with the Central Partnership Public Health Incubator to be one
of five projects nationwide to participate in a new Public
Health Practice Based Research Network Initiative. Its purpose
is to create a network of practitioners and academics that facilitate
research of public health priority research questions.
Both of these new programs will be
models of collaboration. PERRC features partners from three other
universities. The NC Division of Public Health and local NC public
health departments will be key participants in PERRC and in the
research network project as well.
Finally, we realize that state and local public
health agencies will have unprecedented challenges as they address
the needs of the communities in which they serve. The North Carolina
Institute for Public Health at the Gillings School of Global Public
Health remains committed to serving our state and leading the nation
as we continue to address the public health challenges of the next
several years.
Edward L. Baker, MD, MPH
Director, NCIPH
Research Professor, Health Policy and Management
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