Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has released a new report called,  Hard Times in the Heartland: Health Care in Rural America, outlining the health care challenges facing rural communities. Hard Times in the Heartland indicates that nearly 50 million people in rural America face challenges accessing health care. Not only do these Americans face higher rates of poverty, they report more health problems, are more likely to be uninsured, and have less access to a primary health care providers than do Americans living in urban areas. http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/hardtimes/ruralreport.pdf

[posted on Kansas Rural Health Information Service]

8th Annual Conference
Cambio de Colores (Change of Colors) 2009
Latinos in the Heartland
St. Louis, Missouri
May 18-20. 2009
http://www.cambiodecolores.org
http://www.latinosintheheartland.com

The program will consist of some fifty presentations on the following topics: Change and Integration, Civil Rights and Legal Issues, Education, Health Care and Policy, and Youth, Families and Communities, organized in Plenary Sessions (seven, including the Welcome and Closing sessions) and 27 Breakout Sessions.  Breakout sessions include research panels, best-practices panels, and research or outreach workshops. Presenters are coming from the following states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oregon.

The Economic Stimulus: Opportunities and Challenges for Underserved Communities
http://www.preventioninstitute.org/events.html#equity
The National Health Equity Coalition
National Dialogue on Equity and Health Webinar
Tuesday – March 31, 2009
2:00pm – 3:30pm Eastern
The Economic Stimulus: Opportunities and Challenges for Underserved Communities
Expert Panel:
Dr. Brian Smedley, Moderator, Vice President and Director, Health Policy Institute - Joint Center for Political and Economic
Dr. Darrell J. Gaskin, Associate Professor of Health Economics, University of Maryland
Adam Thompson. Senior Health Policy Specialist, Progressive States Network
Larry Cohen, Executive Director, Prevention Institute

Utah Health Disparities Summaries 2009
http://health.utah.gov/cmh/data/disparitiessummary.html
The Utah Health Disparities Summaries series was created by the Center for Multicultural Health and other programs in the Division of Community and Family Health Services of the Utah Department of Health. Each 4-page report compares health indicators of a specific minority population to all Utahns and state and national targets for the year 2010. The reports also include demographic information for context.

As part of the series, “Spotlight! on National Library of Medicine Resources,” http://nnlm.gov/mcr/services/updates/spotlightresources.html,  Marty Magee will present “Educational Resources for Kids” on Wednesday, March 25, for one hour -1:00 MT, 2:00 CT. Tune in to see resources you can use with children on a multitude of health topics. Class includes hands-on exercises - this can be fun! This online training is FREE, and requires no registration. All you need is a computer with Internet access and a phone. All classes can be accessed by going to https://webmeeting.nih.gov/mcr. You’ll sign in as a guest, enter your phone number when prompted and the system will call you! The series is targeted for the fourth Wednesday each month. Upcoming dates and topics include: April 22 - Drug Resources.

University of Missouri-Kansas City on Fri and Sat, May
29-30, 2009
http://inmed.us/exploring_medical_missions_conference.asp
Vast wealth and medical care benefit the world’s affluent, while some three billion persons lack basic nutrition, safe water and health care. As a result diseases of poverty continue to afflict the most vulnerable children, women and elderly. It should not be so! The 2009 Exploring Medical Missions Conference will equip medical professionals to prevent and treat the most prevalent diseases of poverty.  Participants will also have opportunity to network about service opportunities.

“Update on PubMed”
Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009
1:00 MT, 2:00 CT.
“Spotlight! on National Library of Medicine Resources” is a new series of classes presented by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, MidContinental Region!  We’re focusing on the “spotlight” aspect - choosing limited databases on which to focus, and practice time with exercises in each monthly session. And the first is the ” Update on PubMed” This online training is FREE, and requires no registration. All you need is a computer with Internet access and a phone. All classes can be accessed by going to https://webmeeting.nih.gov/mcr. The series is targeted for the fourth Wednesday each month. Upcoming dates and topics include: Feb. 25 -MedlinePlus and the Household Products Database., March 25 - Educational Resources for Kids, and April 22 - Drug Resources. We hope to “see” you there!

The NN/LM MidContinental Region’s 2009 Breezing Along with the RML series resumes next week with presenters Jean Shipman, Director, and Claire Hamasu, Associate Director. Jean Shipman will review the Medical Library Association/NLM Health Information Literacy Research Project results, now that this two-year project has ended.  She will share how this project has helped to educate health care providers about the key role medical librarians can play with improving their institution’s health literacy efforts. Claire Hamasu will recount what happened during the NN/LM site visit including the report from the site visit team that summarized strengths and recommendations for the RML. If you want to preview the site visit report it’s available at http://nnlm.gov/mcr/evaluation/nnlm_sitevisit.html

Date: January 21, 2009
Time: 10 MT, 11 CT
Location: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/mcrupdate/
All you need is an Internet connection and a phone! Enter as a guest!

It’s a new series of classes presented by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, MidContinental Region! We’re focusing on the “spotlight” aspect - choosing limited websites on which to focus, and practice time with exercises in each monthly session. The first is “Update on PubMed” - presented by Rebecca Brown on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009 for one hour - 1:00 MT, 2:00 CT.
This online training is FREE, and requires no registration. All you need is a computer with Internet access and a phone. All classes can be accessed by going to https://webmeeting.nih.gov/mcrupdate and log in as a guest. The series is targeted for the fourth Wednesday each month. Upcoming dates and topics include:

• Feb. 25 -MedlinePlus and the Household Products Database
• March 25 - Educational Resources for Kids
• April 22 - Drug Resources

Cambio de Colores (Change of Colors) 2009 Conference
Latinos in the Heartland
http://www.cambiodecolores.org
May 18-20, 2009
Millennium Center
University of Missouri - St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
The deadline for submitting abstracts is January 23rd, 2009.
The full Call for Abstracts is available in the Web, at the following address:
http://www.cambiodecolores.org/2009/Documents/2009CallForAbstracts.htm
Cambio de Colores is an annual conference that, since 2002, brings together researchers, practitioners, and community members to discuss the issues that Missouri and Heartland states face as a result of the demographic changes that became evident in the 2000 Census. The 2009 meeting will be a multi-state conference.  For this occasion, the  University of Missouri’s Cambio Center is working in cooperation with the twelve-state North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and the Immigrants in Midwestern Communities Inter University Network.

2009 Public Health Preparedness Summit
Public health preparedness professionals from across the nation will share innovative best practices, tools, and resources to help you build and sustain your community’s capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a public health emergency or disaster. http://www.phprep.org/2009/?CFID=2487407&CFTOKEN=48417005

“Netniintoono” (”The Place Where We Live” is a language revitalization project at Arapahoe School that presents an Arapaho alphabet through children’s photographs of their community on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Arapaho elders and culture teachers created the alphabet by matching students’ black and white images with an Arapaho phrase, in order to use student photography to teach the Arapaho language in school. These images and phrases have been displayed in a traveling exhibit, language dictionary, on a DVD, and in jigsaw puzzles and other learning materials. More information about the project can be found in the fall 2008 issue of Mountains and Minds http://www.montana.edu/mountainsandminds/fall2008/windriver/index.html, Montana State University’s newsletter. You can also see the slideshow and video produced by the project. http://www.montana.edu/mountainsandminds/fall2008/webexclusives/windriver/index.html [posted on National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition]