The Maternal and Child Health Library released a new edition of the knowledge path, Physical Activity and Children and Adolescents. This electronic guide points to resources that analyze data, describe public health campaigns and other promotion programs, and report on research aimed at identifying promising strategies for improving physical activity levels within families, schools and after-school programs, child care and early childhood education settings, and communities.  The knowledge path also presents resources about physical activity for children and adolescents with special health care needs.  Knowledge paths on other maternal and child health (MCH) topics are available.

(posted on behalf of Angela Ruffin, Head, National Network Office, NLM)

NN/LM MAR is pleased to announce that on March 29, 2010 Helen P. Tannenbaum joined our staff as Outreach and Communications Coordinator.  Helen received her MSLIS from the Palmer School of Long Island University, where she was elected to Beta Phi Mu, and an MBA from Baruch College of the City University of New York.  Most recently she served as research librarian for the Healthcare Chaplaincy in New York. An expert in adult learning, Helen, in an earlier career, managed a vocational testing program for the New York State Department of Labor.

Helen can be reached at helen.tannenbaum@med.nyu.edu or 212 263 4176.

NN/LM MAR is pleased to announce several new awards that support NN/LM’s mission to enhance access to health information for health professionals and the public.

MAR Leadership Institute – Developing Leaders Among Us

UPSTATE University Health System, Health Sciences Library

Project Manager: Cristina Pope

The MAR Leadership Institute will sponsor a combination of in person and online learning seminars to teach business, management, and leadership skills that will enhance participants’ ability to advocate for themselves, their organizations and their profession with their institution’s senior leadership, external funding agencies, government bodies, and user groups, and, thereby, strengthen health information services to health professionals and the public.  The MAR Leadership Institute Program Committee is composed of representatives from each of the MLA Chapters in the MAR service area. Preliminary Leadership Institute components include: 3 in-person Institutes, a series of 5 or more webinars, the development of an online learning community, and the creation of a blog to support ongoing conversations in leadership topics.  To the extent possible, in person Leadership Institutes will occur in conjunction with Chapter annual meetings.

Increasing Parental Health Literacy to Optimize Pregnancy Outcomes

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

Project Manager:  Prudence Dalrymple

The target population for this project is parents and expectant parents at the 11th St. Family Health Services Center of Drexel University, an urban, federally qualified health center serving primarily African-American and Latino residents of Philadelphia Public Housing.  The Center uses a trans-disciplinary model of care to provide a full range of ambulatory care, dental services, behavioral health services, health promotion, and disease prevention. This project will bring together three organizations in partnership around the goal of improving health literacy in expectant parents:  Drexel University’s Health Sciences Libraries, Drexel’s Institute for Healthcare Informatics (IHI) and the 11^th St. Center.   The collaboration builds upon established relationships between the Center and Drexel’s Institute, and between the Health Sciences Libraries and the Institute for Healthcare Informatics. The specific objectives of the project are to 1) encourage tracking of health-related behaviors throughout the pregnancy and postpartum period; 2) foster the development of long-term health literacy skills that can be applied to other health situations; 3) provide culturally and educationally appropriate information in multiple channels such as print, video, podcasting, to the target audience; 4)identify the strengths of each of these channels by type of content and develop best practices to be shared with the professional community

HealthStart!

Touro-Harlem Medical Library

Project Director: Shelly Warwick

Health Start! is an integrated program that unites in partnership the Touro-Harlem Medical Library, the Touro College of Pharmacy (a program served by the library), Project Aspire, and P.S. 197. It seeks to improve pharmaceutical health literacy and general health literacy in pre and early readers (generally children between the age of 4 through 7) by developing a sustainable and reproducible program to educate children in the target group and their parents. The program will be tested at P.S. 197.