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8th Annual Maine-Harvard
Prevention Research Center Workshop
Anyones Guess:
Why Point of Purchase Information
Results in Healthier Food Choices
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
8:00am-3:00pm
at
Maple Hill Farm, Hallowell
Special
Guest Speakers Include:
Margo Wootan D.Sc—Director,
Nutrition Policy, Center for Science in the Public Interest to help
us understand the issue
Cathy Nonas—MS,RD,CDE.
New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene has been
invited to share their leading edge work and implementation tips
Julie Greene—Director,
Healthy Living at Hannaford Bros. Co, will present their Guiding
Stars program
Sean Faircloth—House
Majority Whip & Representative from Maine will speak on the role of
government
Why Attend:
Without nutrition
information, it is difficult to compare options and make informed
choices. This workshop will:
Present and understand the research on how point of
purchase info changes consumer behavior.
Demonstrate consumer lack of knowledge about caloric
content and that people do not know how to
make
healthy choices of restaurant foods.
Provide examples [both nationally and locally] of point
of purchase work underway.
Discuss the role of government in supporting personal
responsibility.
Energize those willing to advocate for upcoming
legislation.
Registration is limited
to the first 100 registrants so register now!
For more details on
registration and to view the brochure visit our website at:
www.mcph.org/events.htm
FoCUS-
Building the Patient Centered Medical
Home on a Public Health Foundation:
Creating a Roadmap for the Future
with Key Healthcare & Public Health Stakeholders in Maine
With dramatic change under way in the public
health system, and the promise of a new approach to organizing
primary care, there is an unusual opportunity for the two systems to
come together. This program, held on October 15th, complemented two June meetings that
looked at practice redesign and financing issues. The
meeting built on these, looking at how community and public
health systems are likely to be affected by medical homes in order
to develop an action plan for how they can work together. Speakers included North Carolina practitioners Steve Wegner and Betsey
Tilson, Lisa Dulskey Watkins and Craig Jones from Vermont, and Maine’s own
medical home champion, Lisa Letourneau among others. Maine Center for Public
Health has friends around the country with Maine ties—summer homes,
family, retirement plans. Many of these Friends of the Center
Across the US
(FoCUS) joined national experts
to share their best knowledge.
Visit
www.mcph.org/events.htm
to view presentations from the conference.
New Board Members
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Donald
Antonucci
Anthem Blue Cross
Blue Shield
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Rita Bubar
Ciabro
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Barbara Crowley
Maine General Health Assoc.
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Julie Greene
Hannaford Bros.
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Julie Osgood
MaineHealth
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Barbara Shaw
USM Muskie School of Public
Service
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Each year in March, the MCPH board elects new
members. As the Maine Center for Public Health edges towards
its first decade of existence, we’re starting to say goodbye to some of our original members.
MCPH by-laws limit board membership to a maximum of three three-year
terms, so by next year all the members who are appointed to terms
will have rotated out at least once. (A few positions are filled by
organizational members and do not have limits.) In 2007-2008
we sadly said goodbye to some of our founders and long-time
veterans, including Ed Miller and Stephen Sears, as well as our 2007
board chair, Leah Binder. There were many openings to fill. The challenge
was
to continue to recruit new members who represented leadership and
vision for public health in Maine.
And what a great cohort of new members it
found! Business is represented by two stars: Julie Greene is the
director of Healthy Living, a groundbreaking wellness program at
Hannaford, a supermarket that has made community health integral to
its business and Rita Bubar of Cianbro is a national leader among her
human resources peers for the workplace wellness program she has
developed. We improved representation among insurers with the
addition of Don Antonucci, who leads up the small employer market at
Anthem (and has a health services research background to boot). Don and Rita’s representation complements our new staff capacity in
worksite wellness.
Another gap the board wanted to
fill was health law. Barbara Shaw of Muskie School of Public Service
has already helped the board use legal reasoning to sort through
some intricate decisions of its own. Julie Osgood, who once
sat on the board as a representative of the Maine Public Health
Association, has rejoined us in her capacity as
Director of clinical integration for MaineHealth. Finally,
medical leadership in central Maine is represented by pediatrician
Barbara Crowley, Medical Director of MaineGeneralHealth Associates.
To see our new-and current-board members,
visit our
Board Members page.
PE4ME
In response to a legislative resolve to increase physical education
in grades K-8, the PE4ME Planning and
Oversight Team was created in the fall of 2007 and included 24
members from public and private agencies and organizations,
including the Maine Center for Public Health. The team was convened
by the Governor’s Council on Physical Activity and the Commissioners
of Education and Health and Human Services. The American Heart
Association provided significant funding to the group and
Representative Lisa Miller was the sponsor of the legislation.
The duties of the
PE4ME were to:
Examine national
guidelines for physical
education for students in kindergarten to
grade 8.
Develop recommendations for each grade level
including the
minimum number of minutes of
physical
education per day or week and
appropriate
physical activities.
Develop a timeline for implementing its
recommendations
Explore federal and private funding available to
supplement state
resources.
A report to the
legislature was released in January 2008 that proposes a clear
seven-year roadmap to implementation of a statewide evidence-based
physical education program for all K-8 students.
Recommendations for
K-8 students include:
At least 30 minutes per day of physical activity
At
least 150 minutes per week of physical
education.
Certified and highly qualified PE teachers in
every school
Statewide assessments and evaluation
Using
a snack tax to fund the program
Voluntary implementation with benchmarks
Legislation will be
filed in the 2009 session.
Click here to View
the Final Report
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The Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative [MYOC]
Is Building Clinical, Community & School Partnerships To Improve
Prevention, Identification, and Management of Youth
Overweight/Obesity
The
Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative
[MYOC], is a joint initiative of the Maine
Center for Public Health [MCPH], the Maine Chapter of the American
Academy of Pediatrics [MAAP] and the Maine Harvard Prevention
Research Center [MHPRC].
On
Friday, May 2nd, the Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative
[MYOC] kicked off a third and final round of Collaborative work with
30 teams. This is the largest number of teams to participate
to date. They represent a diverse geographical cross section
of Maine and are leaders in working to address the growing
population of overweight / obese youth.
 MYOC
was extremely pleased to have William H. Dietz, MD, PhD, Director of
the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity Prevention
in the Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at
the Atlanta CDC provide the clinical plenary.
The
goal of MYOC is to substantially increase the ability and
effectiveness of physician office practices in Maine to prevent and
manage youth overweight & obesity. Using the Breakthrough
Series Collaborative Model developed by the Institute for
Healthcare Improvement [IHI], MYOC provides participating clinical
practice teams with training, resources, and tools. It assists
them in strengthening linkages to community/school partners and
encourages them to be advocates for change outside of their practice
walls. MYOC’s focus is to improve control of “key changes” in
behavioral and clinical risk factors within each component of the
Care Model.
In
partnership with MaineHealth, MYOC developed the Let’s Go
Childhood Obesity Resource Toolkit for Healthcare Professionals
also introduced at the Learning Session.
MYOC was also extremely
pleased to have Keri Bolton Oetzel, PhD, MPH, LPC lead a series
of Motivational Interveiw trainings on September 10th, 11th and 12th
entitled Effective Communication With Families—Healthy
Behaviors for Healthy Weight. Keri is a licensed clinical
counselor who has worked with children, adolescents and families for
10 years. She is the Communication Trainer at Envision New Mexico.
Her primary role there is to train providers how to communicate with
children and parents about increasing healthy lifestyles. Keri
helped us build internal capacity in Maine specific to the topic of
childhood obesity by sharing her knowledge not only in a basic
training and the MYOC second learning session, but by leading an
advanced group of participants who committed to providing training
to their parent or other organizations over the next year.
For
more information visit:
www.mcph.org/Keep ME Healthy
Pediatric Obesity Clinical Decision
Support Chart Now Available!
MYOC is extremely
pleased to have reached an agreement with the National
and Maine chapter of the AAP to market
and promote internationally the Pediatric Obesity Clinical
Decision Support Chart.
The
new chart was adapted from the Keep ME Healthy
toolkit originally developed by MYOC. It provides clinicians with
practical, point-of-care guidance on childhood obesity. The
chart also contains the latest information from “Expert Committee
Recommendations on the Prevention, Assessment, and Treatment of
Child and Adolescent Overweight and Obesity” published in the
December 2007, volume 120, supplement 4 of PEDIATRICS.
The
chart is the result of the hard work and support of many individuals
associated with MYOC, who are dedicated to promoting healthy
lifestyles for Maine families. We would like to extend special
thanks to our partners, clinical teams and funders for their
generosity.
You
can order a copy of the Maine version of the flipchart from the
Maine AAP at:
http://www.maineaap.org/project_youthoverweight.htm
or
Download a free PDF version on our
website at:
http://www./Major_Activities/KeepMEHealthy.htm.
Take Time! Physical Activity and Nutrition
Program
Here’s what’s happening with Take Time:
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Our evaluation report for 2006-2007 was completed
in the spring and more than
80% of 121 teachers
who responded report that
they see positive changes
in their students as a
result of participating in Take
Time.
· 45 schools participated in the 4th
year of Take
Time. We have moved to a
fully on-line evaluation
process this year to cut
down on the administrative
time needed to enter
hundreds of paper surveys.
·
We were pleased to receive funding from theHarvard
Pilgrim Health
Foundation to boost our Take Time
reach through additional trainings and a video
described below.
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In May, Amy Root and Amy Bouchard from
the Maine Nutrition Network
and Karen
O’Rourke went to Presque
Isle to hold our
first training north of
Bangor. More than 20
teachers and other school
personnel
attended.
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We will be developing a Fall training program
specifically to help PE
teachers become Take
Time champions in their
schools. It will be
presented at the November
Maine
Association of Health,
Physical Education
Recreation and Dance annual
meeting.
o
A video to support teacher training will be
developed that includes the
movements tied
to the CDs that are
distributed at the
trainings. We know
that some teachers
forget the movements or
don’t feel
comfortable moving in the
classroom.
Take Time! is a collaboration between the
Maine-Harvard Prevention Research Center, Maine Center for Public
Health and the Muskie School Maine Nutrition Network with support
from the Maine DOE and Maine CDC. Take Time! schools commit to at
least 10 minutes of physical activity for all kids every day outside
of PE and unstructured recess.
Essential Tools for Essential Services Series Update
Maine is organizing its
public health infrastructure. It’s wonderful that public health is
finally getting more attention from policy makers and the health
community. But more attention means…more attention. As community
health program staff become responsible for more programs, statewide
initiatives are keeping them in the limelight and calling for
greater transparency and accountability.
To help support these
staff, MCPH pulled together several different projects to fund a
series of half-day courses introducing issues and techniques related
to community assessment, evaluation, and public health performance
improvement. The courses were designed for professionals working in
community health programs who wanted to improve or refresh some
specific skills related to measurement and improvement in public
health.
The series of six
courses ran from March 11 to June 13, beginning with our Annual
Meeting program on public health accreditation. National experts
Leslie Beitsch and Michael Stoto joined MCPH staff (Amy Black),
board (Shawn Yardley, Julianne Sullivan) and Senior Fellow (Hugh
Tilson) at the podium. Power points and downloadable audiofiles
will be available at the MCPH web site for people who missed the
programs.
http://www.mcph.org/Major_Activities/AHEC.htm
The series was funded
through the Maine AHEC Network, University of New England; the New
England Alliance for Public Health Workforce Development; Michael
and Penny Pollard; and the
Maine Center for Public Health. Direct support to MCPH provided the
glue that let us bring this all together. Based on the response to
this series we hope to put on another one next year. Let us know
what courses you’d like to see!
For more information or
to make suggestions contact Karen O'Rourke at
korourke@mcph.org.
Healthy Maine Partnerships' Big Media Project Panel Highlights
On May 28th a panel of
national health communication experts was convened at Maple Hill
Farm to share their experiences and lessons learned with the staff
from the Partnership For A Tobacco-Free Maine and its contractors
and partners. The expert panelists represented state, media and
evaluation perspectives and included Rebecca Murphy, Andrea Mowery,
and David Sly respectively. These three perspectives matched those
of the 15 key participants who were seated in a “horseshoe” around
the experts. There were approximately 40 other stakeholders who
were in attendance to listen to the expert panelists and participate
in specific sections of the meeting. Facilitator Carol Kelly from
Pivot Point, Inc. led the key participants in a process of
developing ideas for action to further enhance Maine’s health
communication efforts with the latest evidence-based principles and
practice. For more information about the panel meeting and related
documents please visit our website at:
http://www.mcph.org/Major_Activities/HMP.htm and scroll
down to Products/Related Documents.
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