2006
CFC Is Underway
 The
2006 National Capital Area Combined Federal Campaign (CFC)
has begun!
This year's
campaign theme – “Be a Star in Someone's Life! Support
CFC” – highlights the prominent role donors can
have in the lives of people who benefit from the work of the
CFC charities.
To be
eligible to receive CFC donations, charities must meet eligibility
and public accountability standards set forth in regulations
governing the campaign. This year's “Catalog of Caring”
lists more than 3,000 participating non-profit health and
welfare organizations.
“The
CFC is an easy way for HRSA employees to support their favorite
causes,” says HRSA Administrator Betty Duke. “Many
of the charities that receive CFC donations support the work
of the Department to help people lead healthier lives.”
HRSA employees
who want to contribute to a designated charity should contact
their office’s CFC keyworker, who can explain how to
contribute to the campaign. The easiest way to help your favorite
charity is through automatic payroll deductions; your keyworker
can set that up for you. And remember: contributions to CFC
charities are 100% tax deductible.
HRSA
Leads World AIDS Day Observance at Parklawn
HRSA’s
HIV/AIDS Bureau (HAB) is lending its expertise and experience
to planning this year’s interagency observance of World
AIDS Day at the Parklawn Building.
| “Promise
of Partnership” is the theme of Parklawn’s
World AIDS Day observance, scheduled for November 30
from 2-3 p.m. in Conference Rooms D&E. A program
of remembrance and recommitment is planned, beginning
with a moment of silence to honor those who have lost
their lives to AIDS. Guest speakers will talk about
their personal experiences of living with the disease,
and a musical performance and video will be featured.
Resource
tables from community groups such as Whitman-Walker
Clinic and Metro Teen AIDS will line the conference
rooms with materials and information on volunteer opportunities.
Those in attendance will have an opportunity to remember
loved ones on a giant display. And employees entering
the 5th floor Parklawn lobby will receive AIDS ribbons
and have access to a resource table with a wide selection
of HIV/AIDS information.
The
theme of partnerships is especially timely this year,
the 15th anniversary of the Ryan White CARE Act, which
is administered by HAB.
The
AIDS landscape was much darker 15 years ago, when AIDS
meant almost certain death. Today CARE Act programs
like the AIDS Drug Assistance Program have, for many,
turned AIDS into a chronic, manageable disease.
More
than 530,000 low-income, underinsured individuals receive
CARE Act treatment and services every year to help them
live longer, healthier lives.
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Did
You Know?
The
World Health Organization established World AIDS
Day in 1988 to focus global attention on the HIV/AIDS
epidemic. The day gives governments, national
AIDS programs, churches, community organizations
and individuals an opportunity to demonstrate
the importance of the fight against HIV/AIDS.
At
the end of 2004, almost 40 million people worldwide
were living with HIV. More than 20 million people
have died of AIDS since 1981. The U.S. has an
estimated 1 million to 1.2 million HIV-positive
individuals. Some 35,000 to 40,000 Americans are
newly infected each year.
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CARE Act
expertise is also helping to increase access to international
HIV/AIDS care, treatment and support through a partnership
with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
As in
past years, the Parklawn Health Unit is slated to offer free
HIV testing, in conjunction with the Montgomery County Department
of Health.
To
Learn More…
Visit
these Web sites:
HRSA
Establishes New Office of Commissioned Corps Affairs
HRSA’s
new Office of Commissioned Corps Affairs (OCCA) is helping
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt transform the U.S. Public Health
Service Commissioned Corps.
Led by
RADM Kerry Paige Nesseler, the office was formed in May 2006
in response to Secretary Leavitt’s vision of a transformed
Commissioned Corps – a national resource capable of responding
rapidly to urgent public health challenges and health care
emergencies. The Secretary also wants to boost the Corps’
ranks by 10 percent to 6,600.
As a senior
advisor to HRSA Administrator Betty Duke, Nesseler is primarily
responsible for implementing the Secretary’s vision for
transforming the Corps at HRSA, and ensuring that HRSA’s
472 Commissioned Corps officers – a quarter of HRSA’s
workforce – are better equipped to meet current and future
public health needs.
Nesseler
and OCCA manage all operational functions of HRSA’s Commissioned
Corps, helping ensure basic level of readiness for all HRSA
officers, coordinating deployments, managing the awards process,
and providing career development and mentoring.
Dr. Duke
talked about the importance of the new OCCA at an all-hands
meeting in July where 260 HRSA officers were recognized for
their deployments during last year’s Gulf Coast hurricanes.
“It
was clear that the need for Corps mobilization was going to
go forward, and that we needed to reorganize,” she said.
“With OCCA we will be in a much better position to respond
to a public health emergency, with stronger ties to the offices
of the Surgeon General and Assistant Secretary for Health.”
Grantee
in Florida Hires Grandmothers to Help Families Get Health
Care
A HRSA-funded
program at the University of Florida in Gainesville hires
grandmothers to help low-income, uninsured families in primarily
minority communities learn how to access health care and other
services for their children.
Funded
through grants from HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health
Bureau, the Telehealth Connections for Children and Youth
program links with HRSA-supported health centers and uses
telemedicine technology to facilitate care. Its goal is to
link children to “medical homes” at health centers
and other safety net providers, especially children with special
health care needs (CSHCN) who require care and services beyond
those of most youngsters.
The grandmothers
do their special brand of outreach at health fairs, schools,
day cares, grocery stores and churches – anywhere families
go. “They’re great at finding families the health
centers haven’t had contact with before,” said project
director Lise Youngblade. “They’ve got their ears
to the ground and know who needs care.”
After
a family enters into the program, a grandmother will follow
up and help the family find other needed services. Bilingual
grandmothers often go to school meetings with parents who
have limited English proficiency or accompany them to health
center appointments. This grandmotherly involvement helps
keep enrollment up and dropouts down. The grandmothers are
paid $10 an hour, plus mileage, and get a cell phone for emergencies,
since they’re often traveling. They work about 10 hours
a week.
“Families
in many rural and migrant communities in Florida are scared
or don’t know about public health care programs that
can help their children,” explained Youngblade. “Because
of the matriarchal structure of these communities, grandmothers
are listened to and respected. They’re the ones who can
go in and build a base of trust for health care outreach.”
The idea
to use grandmothers for outreach came out of a brainstorming
meeting with physicians and other partners, Youngblade noted.
“A doctor from Miami said grandmothers were in his office
all the time saying they wanted to make a difference in their
communities. He said if we put them to work, we’d have
a great program. He was right!”
Since
many of the participating health centers are located in areas
where distances are great and transportation poor, the project
relies on high-tech telemedicine videoconferencing technology
to help health care providers evaluate children’s medical
conditions “live” from distant locations.
An Immokalee
health center, for example, partners with All Children’s
Hospital in Tampa for ear, nose and throat “teleclinics,”
since the hospital must offer a certain amount of uncompensated
care.
In Sumterville,
a health center with a psychologist on staff uses telehealth
technology to develop a behavioral “teleclinic”
for youngsters with attention-deficit disorders. “Our
goal is to have the Sumterville psychologist become the behavioral
telehealth provider for the other centers,” Youngblade
said.
The project
also uses telemedicine technology to connect families to nurse
care coordinators funded through Florida’s MCH Title
V state block grant. The nurses do intake evaluations on new
families and coordinate ongoing care. The state’s Medicaid
program, Florida KidCare, and other private-sector organizations
also partner with the project.
Intern
Program Helps HRSA Add Hispanic Perspective, Employees
Every
summer, HRSA offices at Parklawn benefit from the energy and
presence of several young Hispanics, brought to the building
through the national intern program of the Hispanic Association
of Colleges and Universities (HACU).
During
the summer of 2006, HRSA welcomed five HACU interns, a small
slice of the 400 HACU interns who were placed in internships
throughout the federal government and private corporations.
For the
past 12 years, Dario Prieto of HRSA’s Office of Equal
Opportunity and Civil Rights has recruited Hispanic students
through the HACU internship program and placed them in summer
jobs throughout the agency. During Prieto’s years of
managing the intern program at HRSA, the agency has hosted
about 60 HACU students.
The HACU
internships are structured to give Hispanic students an opportunity
to work with federal agencies and corporations seeking to
increase diversity in their workforce. “Hispanic Americans
are underrepresented in every health profession and in the
federal workforce,” says Prieto.
Agencies
benefit from HACU internships by increasing the size of their
pool of prospective hires. “HACU interns are well-qualified
college students who contribute valuable work as interns and
who can later be converted to full-time employees,” Prieto
says.
Melanie
Bujanda, M.P.H., is one such former HACU intern. She joined
HRSA as an intern this summer in the Office of Planning and
Evaluation and then transitioned into the HRSA Scholar class
of 2006.
“I
knew from the very beginning of my internship that working
for HRSA would be a positive way to contribute to society,”
Bujanda said. “Minority groups face huge disparities
in accessing healthcare, and I hope to be part of a group
that changes that.”
Former
HACU intern Angel Seinos, now a project officer in HRSA’s
National Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program, also
felt a calling to help underserved Americans.
During
his internship in 2000 in the Bureau of Primary Health Care,
Seinos worked on a behavioral survey in two migrant farmworker
camps.
“I
collected data from 48 migrant farmworkers and used Statistical
Analysis software to analyze the information,” Seinos
explains. “The analysis was used later to create a scope
of work for a HRSA-funded HIV prevention program for migrant
workers.”
Prieto
says he feels great satisfaction in seeing his former interns
land permanent jobs at HRSA.
“As
the Hispanic population increases, their education and health
care needs increase as well,” he says. “These interns
are contributing to the way HRSA will provide services and
expand access to health care to our community in the future.
That’s what motivates my commitment to the HACU program.”
HRSA
Information Center Launches New Mass Mailing Capabilities
The HRSA
Information Center (HRSA IC), the agency's centralized gateway
to information and resources from more than 70 HRSA programs,
recently launched a new electronic mass mailing request function
that will make mailing in bulk easier than ever.
The service
is open to HRSA staff for official communications and dissemination
of HRSA publications and grantee-produced publications.
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To
arrange mass mailings of letters, documents or publications,
HRSA staff should begin by accessing the HRSA
IC Electronic Request form. Mailings may be targeted
to HRSA grantees or to lists of over 300 groups that
are kept up-to-date by HRSA IC staff. Employees can
request mailings to other groups by providing their
own mailing labels or by submitting customized mailing
lists on Excel spreadsheets.
The
new service complements the HRSA IC’s existing
broadcast e-mail service, which is available to the
HRSA bureaus and offices for official communications
to grantees, state Primary Care Associations and Primary
Care Organizations, or to other groups if customized
e-mail lists are provided.
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Did
You Know?
You
can reach the HRSA Information Center on line
at www.ask.hrsa.gov
or by phone at 1-888-Ask-HRSA (275-4772).
HRSA
IC staff will respond to questions by phone or
email, make referrals, and distribute HRSA publications
and other resources.
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At its
distribution center in Sterling, Va., the HRSA IC manages
an inventory of more than 4 million pieces of 1,500 separate
publications produced by HRSA staff and grantees, along with
other items relevant to HRSA programs. Once requested, items
are distributed free of charge.
HRSA's
Cheever Receives Public Service Award
 Laura
Williams Cheever, M.D., Sc.M., deputy associate administrator
and chief medical officer of HRSA's HIV/AIDS Bureau (HAB),
was honored this past summer with a 2005 Arthur S. Flemming
Award for excellence in public service.
Established
in 1948 in honor of Arthur Flemming, whose career spanned
seven decades of service to the federal government and higher
education, the award salutes outstanding federal workers in
the categories of administration, applied science and mathematics,
and science. Dr. Cheever was recognized in the administration
category.
Before
assuming her current roles in 2002, Cheever was chief of HAB's
HIV Education Branch from 1999 to 2002. Since 1995, she has
maintained an active HIV/infectious disease medical practice
as an attending physician at the Moore Clinic at Johns Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore.
She is
board certified in both internal medicine and infectious diseases
and recently became a Fellow of the Infectious Disease Society
of America. Cheever received her Sc.M. (Clinical Investigation)
from Johns Hopkins University, and both her M.D. and B.A.
in Biology from Brown University.
Peter
van Dyck, HRSA's associate administrator for maternal and
child health, won a Flemming Award in 1998.
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Printer-friendly November 2006 Inside HRSA (Acrobat/PDF)
