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Problem:
Despite the medical advances and economic prosperity in the US, the health needs of many women, children, youth, and families remain unmet. More than half of the goals in Healthy People 2010 concern MCH populations. Many MCH indicators reflect persistent social disparities.
Goals and Objectives:
Goal 1: Provide state-of-the-art MPH graduate leadership training
Objective 1: Admit 15 MPH students each academic year
Objective 2: Fund one MCH-focused PhD epidemiology training each academic year
Objective 3: Enroll 30 students in an advanced MCH distance education course by 2010
Goal 2: Develop a curriculum that promotes leadership, cultural competence, and expertise in MCH competencies
Objective 1: Provide an educational program for MPH students
Methodology:
The specific aims of our program are (1) To train diverse leaders in maternal and child public health; (2) To provide continuing education and technical assistance to health professionals in MCH to keep them informed of the latest research, best practices, and emerging issues in MCH public health; and (3) To serve as a national educational resource on MCH for public health professionals. We accomplish our aims through provision of a traditional and distance education MPH training; mentoring of PhD Epidemiology students in MCH research; conduct of regional conferences and research and skills-enhancing workshops; development and dissemination of a newsletter that profiles MCH programs, policies, and research; productions of videocasts; and the maintenance of electronic communications media (website, listserv).
Coordination:
The Center has strong collaborations with: (1) relevant academic programs at the University of Minnesota; (2) ATMCH; (3) Title V directors in MN, WI, IA, SD, and ND; and (4) community MCH public health workers.
Evaluation:
Process and outcomes indicators for the Center have been clearly specified in the grant proposal. The Center has evaluation instruments to document all required performance measures, process, and outcome indicators.
Experience to Date:
In the past year, we have exceeded student enrollment goals slightly, we have made planned progress on the development of a distance learning MPH program (and may enroll students a year ahead of our schedule), we conducted 1 regional conference for 182 professionals, 1 workshop for 121 professionals, 1 short course for 8 professionals, and 1 short course for 82 professionals. We also co-sponsored two regional conferences, with 152 and more than 400 attendees, respectively. In terms of print and electronic dissemination, we produced two volumes of our newsletter, Healthy Generations; we re-vamped our website (www. epi.umn.edu/mch); and we re-formulated our listserv. Two key personnel on our grant, Drs. Hellerstedt and Oberg, won University-wide and School-wide awards, respectively, for teaching excellence. Critical to our success was our hiring an Outreach Coordinator, Diane Benjamin, who comes to our program with over a decade of leadership experience with the Children's Defense Fund.
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