NICHQ Prepares for Upcoming Spring Maternal Child Health Conference
The National Institute for Children’s Health Quality (NICHQ) is preparing for an exciting spring 2023 conference season, where staff will give poster presentations and facilitate workshops at a variety of national maternal and child health conferences.
Several project teams will represent NICHQ at the 2023 Association of Maternal Child Health Programs (AMCHP) Annual Conference, which will be held May 6-9, in New Orleans. This year’s conference theme is “Cultivating Diverse Leaders in Maternal and Child Health.”
Sandra Widland, MPH, NICHQ Project Director and Kelly Edwards, MPH, Senior Project Manager, will represent NICHQ’s Florida Children’s Medical Services Learning and Action Network project with a workshop about engaging family partners and leaders in QI initiatives. NICHQ’s VP of Health Equity Innovation Dr. Stacy Scott, PhD, MPA, Associate Director of Research and Evaluation Dr. Meera Menon, PhD, and Senior Analyst Rebecca Huber will host a virtual workshop about the Equity Systems Continuum project and NICHQ’s work to validate the continuum. Kenn Harris, VP of Community Engagement, and Dominique Maffei, MSc, Associate Project Director, will represent the Supporting Healthy Start Performance Project with poster presentations on topics such as health equity, infant mortality, racism, and fatherhood.
Learn more about NICHQ’s upcoming presentations and workshops below.
Topic: Family Partnership
Title: Cultivating Family Leadership in Healthcare – the Heart of What Matters.
Presenters: Sandra Widland, MPH, Project Director, and Kelly Edwards, MPH, Senior Project Manager
The workshop will highlight best practices that were cultivated in developing, tending, and sustaining a family leadership workforce for Florida’s Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs. Utilizing an essential resource developed by the presenters, participants will learn how a Learning Action Network (LAN) applied a 12-step roadmap as a tool to cultivate and grow will and supports for family involvement and leadership development. Presenters will share how the LAN uses the roadmap to foster resiliency in overcoming challenges and include family leader testimonial on their growth in full involvement with quality improvement (QI) initiatives. This workshop will highlight family involvement as the heart of QI and the importance of well-being in our workforce, including our family leaders.
Topic: Infant Mortality
Title: Catalyst for Infant Health Equity: A Pathway to Address Excess Infant Deaths by Disrupting Root Causes on a Community Level
Presenters: Kenn Harris, VP of Community Engagement, and Dominique Maffei, MSc, Associate Project Director
This poster will provide an overview of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s (MCHB) new Catalyst for Infant Health Equity Program, which seeks to move beyond direct services to implement targeted policy and systems changes that are focused on one or more specific Social Determinants of Health domains contributing to infant mortality disparities in a particular county/jurisdiction. Readers will learn about the catalyst grantees that received funding, and the innovative data-driven policy and systems-level strategies they are using to address the social and structural determinants of health that impact infant mortality disparities.
Topic: Fatherhood
Title: The State of Fatherhood in MCH – Today, Tomorrow & Beyond
Presenters: Kenn Harris, VP of Community Engagement, and Dominique Maffei, MSc, Associate Project Director
It’s critical to address father inclusion in the maternal and child health continuum. While addressing infant health equity, we must lift up the value fathers play in improving birth and infant outcomes. HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau was established in 1912, but building fatherhood is far behind. Responding to this need, NICHQ Healthy Start Technical Assistance & Support Center convened cross-sector experts shaping the fatherhood work across the 20th and 21st centuries, examining its evolution and offering future direction. Join this session to hear about the state of fatherhood in maternal, family, and community health from the inaugural, “Fatherhood Summit: The State of Fatherhood in MCH Today, Tomorrow & Beyond,” leveraging expertise that led to transformation in fatherhood and MCH. Learn from groundbreaking advances, ideas, and stories shared during this impactful and historic event including, systemic, and social barriers to father inclusion.
Topic: Equity
Title: Healing Roots of Racism and Creating New Narratives for Healing: The StoryWork Project
Presenters: Kenn Harris, VP of Community Engagement, and Dominique Maffei, MSc, Associate Project Director
The Healthy Start TA & Support Center (TASC) is thrilled to be partnering with Dr. Janelle Palacios to host the StoryWork Project. Dr. Palacios is a Salish and Kootenai nurse midwife who was raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwest Montana, and her goal is to bring her passion and expertise to the StoryWork Project to help guide participants toward their respective local native history. The StoryWork Project series will include intensive workshops on five Fridays from January through March, during which participants will discover how American Indian/Alaka Native (AI/AN) maternal and child health has been shaped through historical policies aimed at assimilating and disenfranchising AI/AN people from land, resources, culture, religion, community, and family.
Topic: Equity
Title: Strengthening the Healthy Start (HS) Workforce & Advancing Equity in HS Communities: Moving from Trauma-Informed to Trauma-informed, Resilience-Oriented, and Equitable (TIROE)
Presenters: Kenn Harris, VP of Community Engagement, and Dominique Maffei, MSc, Associate Project Director
To support the 101 Healthy Start (HS) programs, the HS Technical Assistance (TA) and Support Center (TASC) provides TA, training, and education to HS grantees. In response to the complex trauma HS communities have experienced as a result of historical trauma, COVID-19, and the nation’s ongoing racial injustice, the TASC and Dr. Linda Henderson-Smith developed three Trauma-informed, Resilience-Oriented and Equitable Care (TIROE) TA offerings for grantees: a TIROE Community of Practice, a Podcast Series, and a Whitepaper and Roadmap. These activities intentionally infuse equity into trauma-informed care (TIC) principles and practices, in an effort to target the intersection between structural inequities and trauma. In this workshop, we share the TASC’s and Dr. Henderson-Smith’s approach to developing these TIROE activities, including the evolution from TIC to TIROE, and challenges and successes related to the implementation.
Learn more about HS TASC’s Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented, and Equitable Care (TIROE) activities.
Topic: Equity
Title: The Equity Systems Continuum: A Framework to Identify Systemic Bias and Racism in MCH Organizations
Presenters: Dr. Stacy Scott, PhD, MPA, VP of Health Equity Innovation, Dr. Meera Menon, PhD, Associate Director of Research and Evaluation, and Rebecca Huber, MPP, Senior Analyst
NICHQ leads the Equity Systems Continuum project to examine solutions to create equitable change within healthcare systems in maternal and child health. The Equity Systems Continuum was developed by the Global Infant Safe Sleep Center (GISS) to conceptualize the power and disenfranchisement of historically marginalized individuals working in MCH organizations. In this presentation, NICHQ staff will share our efforts to validate the Equity Systems Continuum using a grounded theory methodology. The validated continuum will ensure that health systems can accurately assess their workers’ experiences around equity and inclusion in their organizations and develop appropriate improvement strategies. Implications for programs, policies, and health equity will be discussed.
Register to see NICHQ at the 2023 AMCHP Conference.
