Pilot Project Leaders: Jennifer Pepper of CHOICES

For March we’re featuring our Pilot Project from Tennessee, CHOICES - Memphis Center for Reproductive Health and their featured leader is Assistant Director, Jennifer Pepper.

1. How long have you been in your current position? What brought you to the organization and your current work?

I have been with Choices, formerly the Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, since 2006. I came to the organization to serve as their Community Outreach Coordinator, and in 2010, I become Assistant Director. My path as a women’s health educator and advocate began when I was a young adolescent. My mom was the cool mom. She was open and honest about sexual and reproductive health from an early age with me, my brother, and our friends. It drove me crazy as a teenager, but today, my appreciation for her is immeasurable.

2. What are you most excited about or what is your favorite aspect of Choices’ project that provides reproductive life planning and warm referrals in a post-abortion care setting?

Choices is committed to providing comprehensive reproductive health care, and this project is a natural fit with our mission and vision for a healthier Memphis. Women’s reproductive lives are long, complex, and inter-related with many other needs. Everyone at Choices is excited to help women develop goals related to their reproductive live. Our patient educators are also excited to network with other local providers, so we can connect patients to other resources in the community. Providing birth control is just one piece of helping women realize their goals.

3. What do you anticipate will be the biggest challenge with this project?

This project is a major shift in patient education at our organization. Instead of asking women, “what type of birth control would you like?” We are asking, “What are your goals? When do you want to have kids?” Any large change takes time, and our staff is up for the challenge.

4. Can you share any books, articles, websites (or any great resource you've found) that helps with your work?

In designing our pilot project, the National Preconception Curriculum and Resources Guide for Clinicians was very helpful, and we recommend it to other clinicians interested in starting this work. We’ve also found a number of great reproductive life planning tools from other fellow reproductive health care providers. Here are just a few we really liked:

• Reproductive Life Plan from Emblem Health
• Set Your Mind. Set Your Goals from Delaware
• Are You Ready? Sex and Your Future from North Carolina
• You’re a Busy Women from Utah

EWSE Meeting Reflections: Meeting of the Minds!

By Monica Murphy, MPH, Public Health Prevention Specialist, Metro Public Health Department

Attending the EWSE Regional Meeting May 22-23, 2012, was a great experience. It was truly “a meeting of the minds!” Representatives from each of the 9 member states were in attendance and full of energy and enthusiasm. The two day meeting was jammed packed with discussions about the vision, identity and direction of EWSE and the much anticipated launching of the W.K. Kellogg grant. Everyone at the table shared their expertise, practical wisdom, and hopes for the grant project and the overall work of EWSE.

As a new EWSE team member from Nashville, TN, this meeting was an opportunity to get an in-depth understanding of the mission and goals of EWSE and to be a part of the strategic planning process as the collaborative prepares to move into a new phase. As an emerging public health leader, I have learned that improving the health of our communities is not a one man or woman job. The work that we do in our communities and states will not reach its full potential nor have maximum impact without the vision for new approaches that include collaboration, systems thinking, and adaptive leadership strategies. The EWSE collaborative is one example of a multi-state effort to improve the health of all women in the Southeast regardless of race, place, or circumstance.

MCH Leaders in the Southeast: Tennessee

This month we are featuring Tennessee. One of our featured leaders is Cynthia Chafin, M.Ed., CHES, Project Director and Consultant, MTSU’s Adams Chair of Excellence in Health Care Services/Center for Health and Human Services, and Community Health Collaboratives, LLC. We recently asked her a few questions about her work and why she is involved with Every Woman Southeast.


How long have you been in your current position?

I have been an independent project director working with multiple grants and organizations since 2000, and incorporated in 2007 as Community Health Collaboratives, LLC. The first grant that I ever worked on was organizing, facilitating, and managing the Tennessee Folic Acid Council activities in 2000. The Council has been active in a variety of folic acid initiatives since its inception, and some of its members have now formed a preconception advisory committee for an upcoming grant focusing on broader preconception health programming. I have managed multiple grants through the work that I do with Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) Center for Health and Human Services since 2003, including S.M.A.R.T. Moms, a five-year prenatal smoking cessation grant that reached over 13,000 pregnant smokers and a grant focusing on SIDs education for WIC patients as well as special programming for pregnant and parenting teens in local high schools. I recently received funding for a second- year project to be implemented on the MTSU campus educating college-age women on preconception health and being aware of how the choices they make now might impact them later in life. The project will use the web, text messaging, and other social media tools as modalities for educating young women on these important areas during 2012/2013. The “Did u Know What’s Good 4 u is Good 4 ur Future Baby” project promises to be exciting, innovative, and engaging to our target audience! In addition to implementing these activities on the MTSU campus, we will be developing a tool kit for other academic institutions across the state to replicate the program on their campuses. The response was overwhelmingly positive during the pilot phase of this project with over 1200 young college women participating in learning activities. I am very excited what we will be able to accomplish through this second year with a broadened scope and mission. I want to thank the March of Dimes for funding both the SMART Moms and "Did u Know" programs.

What is your favorite thing/task/part of your work?

I enjoy working on multiple grants and projects. I never get bored and it never seems ‘routine’ or dull. I find both short term and long term grants equally rewarding.

What is your biggest challenge?

Of course funding is a challenge for most of us. With many of the projects I work on, it isn’t certain whether or not we will have the funding to continue the project long enough to accomplish what we would like to accomplish. Each project is designed with sustainability in mind so that the work can continue even if the funding does not. This also provides a broader reach in that others can carry forward the work that has already been done and create a multiplying effect, with bigger benefits. Another big challenge is just not having enough time in the day and in the week to do all that I want to do and hope to accomplish. It’s hard to change the world, but it’s possible to change one small corner of each individual’s world if they find something that they are passionate about and pursue it, with the goal of making a difference through positive change. While I don’t expect to solve all of the world’s public health issues, it’s nice to feel like I can make a difference even though I wish I had more hours in the day and week to do it.

Why are you involved in/interested in Every Woman Southeast?

Every Woman Southeast provides an opportunity for partnerships and relationships with professionals who face the same public health issues that we face here in Tennessee. Historically, Tennessee has not fared well in many areas, and the other states involved in Every Woman Southeast face some of these same issues and really ‘get’ the challenges that we face. We all learn so much from each other and the benefits of collaboration are invaluable. From the webinars to blogs to the opportunities to collaborate together on grant opportunities, Every Woman Southeast provides a great way of communicating with and learning from others who really understand our public health issues and concerns and who are equally passionate about improving the health status of their states.

If you had a million dollars what would you do with it?

I would definitely continue working as a public health professional, as public health is my passion and my calling. I would probably pay off bills and expenses, splurge a bit for my children and husband, and divide some of the remainder between all of the different organizations that fund projects that I work on, since the issues we are trying to tackle are immense and never seem to have enough resources. I’d also fund an animal welfare project!



To find out more about Chafin's work visit http://www.communityhealthcollaboratives.com/index.asp. You can also visit http://www.mtsu.edu/achcs/about_chair.shtml. To find out more about what is happening in Tennessee, visit everywomansoutheast.org/partners/tennessee.

MCH Leaders in the Southeast: Tennessee

Another one of month's featured leaders from Tennessee is Kimberlee Wyche-Etheridge, MD, MPH, Director, Bureau of Family, Youth and Infant Health at the Metro Nashville Davidson County Public Health Department. She  recently answered her a few questions about her work and why she is involved with Every Woman Southeast.

How long have you been in your current position?

Ten years

What is your favorite thing/task/part of your work?

My favorite part of the job is looking for new and innovative ways to address and solve old problems, as well as the honor I have to work with the community and colleagues on the National MCH stage.

What is your biggest challenge?

Using a quote I heard earlier this month, my biggest challenge is, “Those who represent the corporate immune system whose job it is to kill anything different or new.”

Why are you involved in/interested in Every Woman Southeast?

I believe that change and improvement cannot happen in a silo. We must work together, share resources as well as successes and failures in order to create a movement of improved health for women and families across the South.

If you had a million dollars what would you do with it? 

I would set up a scholarship system so that every baby born in high risk areas was set up with a college savings account so that as they grew, they would understand that the community cared enough about him/her, and believed in him/her so much that this account was started, and in return the expectation is for high school graduation, college and greatness on behalf of the communities that need their help.

To find out more about what is happening in Tennessee, visit everywomansoutheast.org/partners/tennessee.