Leadership in the Mississippi Delta - Arletha Howard

Pictured left to right are: Braxton Stowe, Quitman County High School, Adminstrator, Reverand Bernard Handy, Valley Queen Mississionary Baptist Church, Larry Stevenson, Quitman County Middle School, Coach/Teacher, Officer Terry Williams, Quitman County Sheriff Department, DeJuan Watts, Male Involvement, Tougaloo College/Delta HealthPartners Healthy Start, and seated Arletha Howard, Project Director, Tougaloo College/Delta HealthPartners Healthy Start

From Arletha - I have been the Project Director for Tougaloo College/Delta HealthPartners for almost two years. However, I have been a part of Healthy Start since 1999 as a nurse case manager. I was attracted to Healthy Start because of the holistic approach of service to moms, babies, fathers, and communities through a home visiting model.

As far as what I enjoy about my work, I am very excited about the aspect of focusing on men and their important role as parents or future parents. For many years, programs and emphasis has been on moms and babies with little to no attention given to fathers. Studies have validated the importance of fathers in the life of a child attributes to their development and well-being.

The biggest challenge that we are encountering is limiting the participation of the Life Course and Reproductive Health trainings to one county. There is a keen interest from numerous organization and agencies throughout our catchment area in the Mississippi Delta and who want to be a part of the trainings, and numerous inquiries about when this project will come to their areas.

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

Show Your Love: Thoughts from a Recent MCH Grad on Preconception Health

By Sarah Leff, MPH, Program Associate at the UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health

In May of last year, I graduated from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health with my MPH in Maternal and Child Health (MCH). I have been working at the UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health, first as an intern and now as a program associate, for a little under two years now. It makes my head spin (in a good way) to think about how much I’ve learned in that short time. Being exposed to so many different aspects of MCH helped me refine what I was really interested in. One of my main interests now is preconception health – even though I had never heard of it before I started graduate school. To me, preconception health is women’s health – making sure that we are healthy and happy throughout our lives. As we say in MCH, ‘from womb to tomb.’ And, since many of us will have children one day, preconception health helps protect their health in the future as well.

Preconception health is an exciting and challenging field to work in, because it is more directly relevant to me as an individual than some of our other projects. Unlike tobacco cessation or postpartum care, preconception health is personal for me – I am a consumer, part of the target audience. I can understand some of the barriers to preconception health, because I’ve experienced them. Beyond tangible barriers like lack of health insurance, there is the mental struggle to value health and prioritize it in my life. Even as someone working in public health, this can be a challenge! It sometimes feels like between leaving our teens and when we become mothers, women drop off the map in terms of health care. We are often busy building our careers, finding time to nurture our personal relationships, figuring out how to make it as independent adults, and laying the foundation for the lives we want to have in the future. Among all of these concrete responsibilities, health can feel somewhat abstract, and healthy behaviors can feel like a luxury. It’s hard to find time to take care of yourself, visit the doctor, cook, and exercise. Unless you don’t have a choice – I’ve found that having a puppy is a great way to make exercise not optional!

So how do we get the message out – to the women we serve AND to ourselves – that our health is important? I’ve been very excited to learn about the new Show Your Love social marketing campaign. This campaign is a partnership between the CDC and the Preconception Health and Health Care Initiative, and the name pretty much says it all – Show Your Love! To yourself, and if you are planning a pregnancy, to your baby. This message resonates because it frames health not as an obligation or another stressful item on your "To Do" list, but as a way to love and care for yourself. This positive message helps remind me that ultimately, health is a prerequisite for everything else I want to enjoy in life, so I need to take care of my health and myself. Show Your Love isn’t a vague concept either – the supporting resources and materials help women with specific steps they can take to protect and promote their health. I’d like to add that preconception health shouldn’t be ‘ladies only’ – it is vitally important to include and engage men in this effort, and encourage them to Show Your Love as well – to themselves, and to the women in their lives.

Love is a word we use a lot in MCH. Maybe because even on the hardest days, we still know we’re lucky to be doing what we love. I hope Show Your Love spreads and catches on across the country – it’s a message we could all use a little more of.

The legacy lives in us

What an amazing day - the second Presidential inauguration on the day we lift up the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Today is a confirmation of the work we do together as a coalition, as women, as sisters, as daughters and as mothers. In spite of the challenges that we face in the Southeast we are indeed called to step forward and speak change into action.

Our President said it all.


Excerpts from President Barack Obama's Inaugural Speech Today

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

....

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service.  But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or an immigrant realizes her dream.  My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.

They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope.

You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright.  With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

Pilot Project Leaders: Margarita Franco of PASOs

This month we’re featuring Margarita Franco, Director of Community Leadership Development at PASOs a community-based organization hosted at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina.

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

I hold a degree in psychology from Colombia, South America and a certificate in Women and Gender studies, and I am currently working on my Master’s degree in Social Work. I have been working with PASOs and the Latino community in South Carolina for the past five years. I help at-risk Latino families, especially women, access the information and resources they need to be healthy. I am passionate about women’s health issues, and I love being a channel that empowers women to realize their potential and make positive decisions that improve their lives.

What are you most excited about or what is your favorite aspect of the Choose Today a Healthy Tomorrow project?

I am excited about the opportunity to work with the Latino community around reproductive health issues because there are some unique needs among this newly settled population in South Carolina. PASOs always tries to work in ways that are culturally appropriate, tailoring messages and approaches to the specific needs and realities of the community. One of our culturally competent approaches is creating teams of community health workers who can bring health information and resources to their peers and neighbors. In the Choose Today a Healthy Tomorrow project, the community health workers will reach their community through a local radio show. I look forward to watching the community health workers learn the new skills needed to educate others about preconception health and be a part of a radio broadcast.

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

I anticipate that the learning process will be somewhat challenging because most of our community health workers have little or not experience working in the world of radio. Also, we are not sure if members of the community who are invited to call into the radio will want to do so at the beginning.

Can you share any great books, articles, websites, etc, that would help people learn more about using media to reach vulnerable populations (or any great resource you've found that helps with your work)?

The preconception health campaign called “Amor y Salud” (Love and Health) features a radio-soap opera, or radionovela, to reach Latina women in Oregon over the radio. It is featured in both English and Spanish.  There are two radio programs that broadcast out of Mexico that have been helpful guides for our work, “Red Nosotras en el Mundo” (Our network in the world) and CIDHAL. Both are dedicated to progressing the rights of women.

In January, PASOs will publish an article entitled, “Developing a Culturally Appropriate Preconception Health Promotion Strategy for Newly Immigrated Latinos Through a Community-Based Program in South Carolina,” in the American Journal of Health Promotion. It details how PASOs is incorporating best practices to create a new strategy to reach this population with messages on preconception health.

Light in the Darkness

Friends and colleagues,

All of us have been touched by the recent violence in Newtown, CT. There has been for me, however, a sense of shared community across the nation and a true "knowing" that I'm part of something greater than myself. There is a force that unites us that is more powerful than anything else - the love we feel for our babies and children. This love and connection is transcendent - beyond politics, heavy workloads, worries about the future, the fiscal cliff... And in this season of light, it is a beacon of hope for us all as we strive so hard to make sure that we fulfil America's promise to our smallest and most vulnerable citizens.

In this last post for 2012 we want to include an exerpt from President Obama's Speech on December 16th in Newtown. I had the gift of listening to this speech with my teenage daughter - she reached over and held my hand. It was a beautiful moment even as these words brought me to tears as they resonnated so deeply.

As we move into the New Year, there is much to anticipate with joy and much work to do. For now, we wish you peace, time to rest and hope for what is to come.

Warmest Wishes,

Sarah Verbiest
Director - Every Woman Southeast Coalition


"You know, someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around.


With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves, our child, is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice, and every parent knows there’s nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet we also know that with that child’s very first step and each step after that, they are separating from us, that we won’t -- that we can’t always be there for them.

They will suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments, and we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear. And we know we can’t do this by ourselves.

It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself, that this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community and the help of a nation.

And in that way we come to realize that we bear responsibility for every child, because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours, that we’re all parents, that they are all our children.

This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged. Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm?

Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know they are loved and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer’s no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change."  President Barack Obama

Pilot Project Leaders: Mirine Dye of Urban Health Partnerships

This month we’re featuring Mirine Dye, a Program Manager for Urban Health Partnerships and new member of the Every Woman Southeast Coalition.

How long have you been in your current position?

I joined Urban Health Partnerships (UHP) and our corporate arm Urban Health Solutions (UHS) in May of 2012. This EWSE grant project is my first venture with our non-profit arm, UHP.

What brought you to the organization and your current work?

The UHP Executive Director, Anamarie Garces, and I teamed up a few years ago to represent our graduate school of public health (Florida International University) in a Student Scholar Competition, which we placed third Campus wide. I then had the opportunity to put together a team to participate in the American Public Health Association Maternal Child Health Leadership Institute and felt Anamarie and I would be great team members. Our state project for Florida involved intersecting public health preparedness, epidemiology and maternal child health. We gained national recognition and remained in contact over the years. She reached out to me after forming her company and invited me to consider participating as a collaborator, and my grant funded position at the time was winding down so the timing was perfect. I came on board to assist with any projects that needed more staff, and was encouraged to seek grants in our areas of interest.

What are you most excited about for the Transportation Access Throughout the Life Course project?

I am most excited about the opportunity to creatively intersect two areas of public health, which usually do not get much attention together. Transportation and particularly active transportation (walking, biking, safe streets as well as public transportation) have been increasingly seen as not only a public health issue, but a public policy and urban planning focus. When we consider “access to care” usually the number of clinics or the number of providers and the cost is what comes to mind. We are looking at a broader view of access to care, meaning, how do women age 15-44 (and men) get to the clinics which are targeting them with reproductive and preconception care services? Miami-Dade has several areas of concern within this age group relating to reproductive health, and we want to see how do they access the services which are offered, and what improvements can be made. Are there plenty of bus routes or safe sidewalks? Are the areas shaded and comfortable for women and families in the Miami heat? What about bike routes for men and women to access the clinics easily? Are clinics and clients aware of these options? How easy is it to access information or plan your trip without a car? These are the questions we hope to answer with our project.

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

I think we will have a couple of challenges; the first challenge being how can we engage our non-traditional health partners in this topic? We have reached out to our planners, engineers and transportation partners and we are at the beginning stages of the formation of the steering committee. I know we will have to sell them in the first meeting in order to ensure long-term participation and interest. The second challenge will be to create a marketing outreach campaign to translate our findings, and get the information into the hands of those who plan clinics and can influence street and transportation improvements.

Can you share any great books, articles, websites, etc, that would help people learn more about urban planning or transportation and the intersection with health?

Although I was not involved with this particular UHP project, I feel that the Broward Complete Streets Initiative was particularly influential in my recommendation to seek grant support for our Transportation Throughout the Life Course project. I would definitely recommend visiting the website BrowardCompleteStreets.org which then has other resources available as well. We have also set up a website for our project, and hope to list many references to help both transportation and maternal child health groups understand the significance of taking MCH out of a silo, and inserting MCH into the bigger picture of urban health and planning: Transportation4Families.org.

I am currently reading Making Places Healthy: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being and Sustainability, edited by Andrew Dannenberg, Howard Frumkin and Richard Jackson, and would recommend it for a practical, yet comprehensive, systems-level look at the built environment and health.