STAFF AND COMMITTEE REPORTS
October 23, 2012

Coordinator’s Report (on activities not included below)

  • Work has continued with Jerry Montoya, Kitty Richards and the staff of the Santa Fe Community Foundation to help lay the groundwork for the the W.K. Kellogg Foundation- funded NM Health Equity Partnership (HEP).The HEPmanager and three coordinators have been hired.(See August staff report for more background information on HEP.) Marsha, Kitty and Jerry attended a presentation to the W.K. Kellogg Board of Trustees about the Health Equity Partnership and Place Matters on October 17th and Marsha attended the reception for grantees on October 18th.
  • Marsha presented with Michelle Skrupskis on Results-Based Accountability to the Metro/NW Regional employees of DOH on September 27th.
  • Marsha continues participating with the Community Partners for Health Equity (CPHE), the MEDICC-sponsored group working in the South Valley to apply lessons learned from visits to Havana, Cuba, to observe the public health and medical system. The group sponsored a presentation on October 1stby Dr. Pastor Castell-Florit Serrate, Director of the National School of Public Health in Havana, Cuba, who spoke about the importance of intersectoriality for public health.

Collective Impact for County & Neighborhood Health (CINCH)

  • The CINCH project held its 4thTraining Academy session for the Leadership Team and Advisory Teams on September 26th, focused on Engaging Communities for Sustainable Change. Presentations included: “The Role of Community Engagement in Health Promotion” with Leah Steimel, MPH, Director, Office of Community Affairs, UNM Health Sciences Center; an interactive exercise withKiran Katira, PhD, Director, UNM Community Engagement Center; “Local Success Story: What’s In A Name?” with Enrique Cardiel, MPH, Urban Health Extension Coordinator and Facilitator of the International District Healthy Communities Coalition; “Participatory Approaches with Tribal Communities” with Lorenda Belone, PhD, Assistant Professor, UNM College of Education, RWJF Senior Fellow; and “Engaging African American Communities” withKalonji Mwanza, Village Servant. Video summaries of all four Training Academy events are currently being compiled and will be made available online soon.
  • On September 28th, all deliverables for Year One for the CINCH project were submitted online to the CDC. Planning has now begun for Year Two of the grant, focused on the development of a Community Transformation Implementation Plan, to be submitted to the CDC in the spring of 2013 for funding in Year Three (beginning October 2013).

Community Health Improvement Planning (CHIP) Process

PRIORITY: “Healthy and sustainable communities where all families and individuals have their basic needs met and prosper.”

Economic Democracy – The minimum wage increase has made it onto the ballot. An increase in minimum wage has been shown to have positive impacts on health of those whose wage is increased.The group “Organizing in the Land of Enchantment” is trying to spread the word.

Built Environment – Discussions will begin at the October BCCHC monthly meeting on recommendations to include in the County Health Profile for policy changes that would improve the ability of communities to make positive changes to their neighborhood environments.

PRIORITY: “Improved health education outcomes for children/youth from pregnancy to

age 25.”

Early Childhood Accountability Partnership (ECAP)–The ECAP Organizing Team has been meeting twice a month, focused on using the Collective Impact framework and Results-Based Accountability (RBA) to strengthen the organizational capacity of ECAP to address the issue of school readiness in Bernalillo County children. The quarterly convening of all ECAP partners was held on October 18th from 1:00-4:00 pm at the Alamosa Community Center. Three committees have been formed for the first year planning process: Governance and Infrastructure (contact Marsha for more information); Communications and Community Engagement (contact Judy Baca for more information); and Strategic Planning and Data (contact Louise Kahn for more information).

ABC Community Schools Partnership and Strive – Examining the move toward alignment, it could be said that ECAP is nested as the early childhood component within the ABC Community Schools Partnership, which in turn is nested within the Strive initiative being developed at UNM as a “cradle to career” continuum that addresses the issue of student success in school and throughout life. Both José Muñoz, Executive Director of the ABC Community Schools Partnership, and Dr. Viola Florez of UNM’sNetwork for Education Renewal/Strive, are active members of ECAP as well, allowing for alignment of all of these initiatives.

Connecting Data to Action Workshop– NM Voices for Children has been presenting workshops around the state to provide the case for preventing later costs to the system when children/youth experience social and educational difficulties. They are laying the foundation forsupport oflegislation that calls for a constitutional amendment that would commit a small percentage of the Land Grant Permanent Fund to early childhood education. The workshop in Bernalillo County was presented on October 15that the County’s Multipurpose Senior Center in the South Valley.

PRIORITY: “Improved healthcare access and quality of service for uninsured and indigent populations.”

Opioid Accountability Summit - A new contractor has not yet been identified for the Summit. The planning committee has met four times and has tentatively targeted the last week of March 2013 for the Summit, after the legislative session. It is being referred to as an “accountability summit” at this point, since there will be an update at that time of actions to improve the system that will be occurring between now and then, including initiation of new services as well as any integration of existing services across sectors (County, City, State, UNM, non-profits). The Summit will then develop recommendations for moving forward based on those updates and what is still needed.

NM Alliance of Health Councils (NMAHC)

  • The first NMAHC strategic planning retreat was held at the Santa Fe Community Foundation on September 28 to discuss strengthening the NMAHC organizational structure within the context of the new funding for the NM Health Equity Partnership, as well as continuing the discussion on requesting renewed state funding, and planning for training events for the upcoming year.
  • A statewide convening of all health councils will be held on Wednesday, December 5th at the Sheraton Albuquerque Airport Hotel. The convening is being scheduled the day before the NMPHA Health Policy Forum to allow more health council members from around the state to participate in that event as well.
  • Lori Ann Loera has been hired as the NMAHC coordinator to be housed at the Santa Fe Community Foundation and will begin the week of November 5th.

Urban Health Extension

Enrique Cardiel continues working on the following activities:

o Critical Health Literacy has been presented to Presbyterian, Doctoral students in Pharmacy and to the DOH employees of the Metro/NW Regions. Follow-up meetings will happen before the end of the month.

o Participating in the instruction of a new course at UNM through OLIT – along with Daryl Smith, Leah Steimel and Leigh Caswell, among others. “This 3-credit course is designed to challenge the student to examine the correlation between the social determinants of health (i.e. the environments in which a person lives, works, plays) and poor health outcomes, focusing on the greater Albuquerque community.”

o Facilitating International District Healthy Communities Coalition (IDHCC) in working toward coordinating services and policies to make the International District a great place to raise Happy, Healthy and Safe Children. A new issue that has come up is UNMH deciding to add alcohol and substance abuse programs (ASAP) in the International District.

o Working with SE service providers to seek better ways to support those who are publicly intoxicated.

o Participating on the City of Albuquerque's Affordable Housing Committee and the HM1 Task Force for Family Friendly Jobs.

o Working to mentor new public health workers and medical providers interested in population health work.

o Working on a communications plan entitled “Promoting Community Health in Bernalillo County.” This plan has been looked at and supported by UNM HSC Vision 2020, UNM HSC Urban Health Partnership, Strong Families, the Health Council and possibly the NMPHA communications committee.

o Supporting organizations with facilitation, research, and other technical assistance around issues such as the KAFB Jet Fuel spill, and sector planning.