Joan Wightkin - Making Waves in Louisiana

What brought you to the organization and your current work?


I have been in this position (Interpregnancy Care coordinator in the Birth Outcomes Initiative, Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals) for almost 2 years. I had the fortunate opportunity to work with New Orleans area community health and social service agencies, to help build a system for high risk women based on the successful interconception intervention at Grady Memorial Hospital.

What are you most excited about or what is your favorite aspect of your project on reproductive life planning?

I’m most excited about working with a talented and uniquely qualified advisory board to guide our project on reproductive life planning. The board consists of experts in social marketing, health education, literacy, African American fatherhood issues, social services, film, website development, and women’s health. Consumers guided the development of our 2 commercials that are now being aired.

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

The biggest challenges are the barriers to women seeking and/or accessing family planning services. Over half of the births in Louisiana are unintended and only 13% of women enrolled in Louisiana’s Family Planning Waiver the first year after delivering a baby, actually access these contraceptive services.

Can you share any books, articles, websites that help with your work?

Our NEW website GreatPlan.Net includes websites that offer good information about STI, Family Planning, Primary Care and other resources available in local communities across the US. We also included the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals’ Method Match tool that helps women choose a birth control method that fits their lifestyle and personal preference.

Kim Williams - Leading Change in New Orleans

What brought you to the organization and your current work?


I have been working as the Director for Healthy Start New Orleans for 9 months and I think we are on the path to a healthy new baby! I have been working in maternal and child health with social marketing and with the Nurse-Family Partnership National Service Office for seven years and love the world of maternal and child health. It’s been my life dream to improve outcomes for African Americans in what I consider my home state of Louisiana while trying to build on the beautiful culture and history of the state. I came to Healthy Start because it provides an opportunity for us to touch clients directly in their communities and we have a unique role in hearing the community voice to define their own resources, challenges, and asking for our clients help in defining services that work for them. I’m so excited about leading our Best Babies Zone work because it’s a “lab” for taking policy to practice to see if we can change birth outcomes by making community change.

What are you most excited about or what is your favorite aspect of your project on reproductive life planning?

I’m excited to be part of an effort to get women in my community and my state to start thinking about their reproductive health and planning for their future. For so many women here, pregnancy “just happens”. I hope that families can use our tools and services to reflect more about their goals, dreams, and their bodies and use the Life Map we provide to begin thinking about how they want their family to be shaped.

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

Throughout the world of maternal and child health, we need to do a better job of listening to the families we serve. Our clients tell us what their families need and oftentimes our maternal and child health priorities are not aligned with our families’ priorities. In a city with tremendous violence and a state with persistent poverty, health is not on the top of people’s lists of concerns. We have to use the tools we have and put them into context for why health matters, how it impacts all areas of your life, and how having a healthy pregnancy and baby can set your child up for a way out of poverty and violence.

Can you share any books, articles, websites that help you with your work?

Required reading for all my staff includes “The Gardener’s Tale” by Camara Jones, “Cultural Humility” by Melanie Tervalon, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Birth Outcomes: A Life-Course Perspective” by Dr. Lu.
Books That Inspire me include: Good to Great, Adaptive Leadership, The Social Entrepreneurs Handbook and Seven Tribes of Hattie- A fictional tale that tells the story of a mother from the Deep South after migrating north and a challenging life trajectory due to infant mortality

Run On

I was not athletic during the first few decades of my life. However, as I embraced my fourth decade I discovered that I love to run. It helps get rid of stress, gets me outside, gives me time to think and keeps me healthy. Over the past year, I've worked on running faster and further. In that process, I have learned that what I love most about this sport is running with other people. For a sport that is often perceived as solitary, there is actually a lot of solidarity and community among runners. Whether you are a beginner runner working up to a 10 minute jog or someone who can run for hours, we are all more likely to put on those sneakers if we have a friend waiting to go with us. My world has wonderfully expanded to include the amazing women I've met on this journey. This support is magnified during races - from one mile fun runs to full marathons - fans made up of family, friends and kind strangers create the adreneline to push oneself beyond expectations. Really, how many times in life do you have people clapping for you, cheering and telling you "You Have This....Looking Strong!"? As I, like so many others, have struggled to understand what happened in Boston earlier this week, I've decided that the message that I want to perpetuate is that of community. Belonging is essential. Being together is necessary. Finding our common hopes and dreams creates understanding. Having gratitude for those who cheer us on and bring water to keep us safe is a blessing. Running...is beautiful.   **  Sarah Verbiest

My "Cape Girls" Running Group Finishing our 200th Mile of the Palmetto200 in South Carolina.

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.