H.E.R.E. Newsletter Survey Results: Your Voices Have Been Heard

Thank you for giving us feedback about the H.E.R.E. newsletter in the survey that was sent out with the November issue. Your comments and suggestions gave us a better idea of how to tailor the newsletters to our readers.

Over time, we will address article topics that colleagues requested, as well as other ideas to help improve the newsletter. Suggested newsletter topics that we will address in this and upcoming newsletters include the link between environmental health and chronic disease, tools for health equity and social justice, community health efforts, and more. Other new ideas that you will notice are announcements of upcoming trainings added to H.E.R.E. since the last newsletter issue, and highlighting a new publication or other resource in each newsletter.

If you have ideas of how we can improve the newsletter, or a request for articles you would like to see in future newsletters, write us at here@doh.wa.gov.  As a reminder, and to inform future H.E.R.E. colleagues, we will include a short sentence in each newsletter release email that invites article topic ideas from our readers so  we can continue to write articles that relate and appeal to you.

Thank you for sharing your feedback. We hope our newsletter continues to interest and inform you.

Making Homes Healthier

The Healthy Homes program at the Washington State Department of Health is working to make sure homes are healthier through a new grant with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The project focuses on identifying children with health issues potentially caused or made worse by environmental hazards in the home. Examples are elevated blood lead levels or asthma. The grant goals are to “connect the dots” – linking current resources and programs to address the house and health of the child. They have created a new multi-sector partnership to help families reduce hazards in their home. Over 70 partners are involved with backgrounds including housing, asthma, transportation, and healthy homes. An advisory group had its first meeting in December 2011. Three workgroups chaired by housing experts were also created, including: (1) Strategic planning workgroup (2) Healthy housing pilot project in Seattle, and (3) Case management workgroup. 

Goals for the coming year include expansion of partnerships, piloting a pre-rental inspection program in Seattle, creating a list of home hazard prevention resources, and creating a plan to connect families with housing resources. The advisory group l welcomes new members to participate. To learn more or get involved, please contact Lauren Jenks at lauren.jenks@doh.wa.gov.

Spotlight: Chelsey Lindahl, Health Educator

Never let anyone stop you from following your dream. “You can make anything happen if you have passion” says Chelsey Lindahl, Health Educator with MultiCare Center for Healthy Living in Tacoma-Pierce County. Chelsey has always been interested in nutrition and public health and her passion has proven to be one of her greatest strengths. Even though a college professor discouraged her from pursuing the field because of the job market, Chelsey stuck with her passion, and now enjoys working in her community and helping to make a difference in people’s lives.

Chelsey was born and raised in Tacoma, where she lives with her firefighter husband. They have two dogs, a cat, guinea pig, and fish and love to snowboard and hike. Chelsey has worked at MultiCare for the past five years while she went to school for her nutrition degree. She credits her path into public health to her two mentors, Lori Tanner and Paige Fury, who helped her move her way up from a temporary position into the health educator position she’s held for the past three years. They encouraged her to pursue her passion and degree, and gave her freedom to be creative. She completed her dietetics degree last year and is finishing her internship. She is preparing to take her registered dietician exam this summer.

Chelsey has some very unique pastimes including co-owning a figure skating company, being a figure skating coach, and being a nutrition and health blogger. Chelsey was a competitive figure skater from the age of nine until she was 17 years old. After a hiatus, she and a friend opened up a figure skating program where they both teach group classes and give private lessons. Chelsey has been doing this for the past three years and loves being active and teaching her students and their families how to be healthy. She has always enjoyed sports nutrition and makes sure to talk with her students about having a balanced diet. You will be inspired by her stories and recipes.

After hearing a nutrition blogger speak at a conference a few years ago, she was inspired to start a health and nutrition blog. What started as a side hobby blossomed into a creative way to educate others about good health and share lessons she’s learned from her life and others. She tries to update the blog a few times a week and gets 50 to 100 hits a day. She loves the personal connections and comments she gets from her readers.

Chelsey is inspired by the real connections she gets to make with people. She loves each individual opportunity to increase people’s knowledge and show compassion and kindness. Knowing she’s making lasting changes in each person’s life keeps her motivated. About 70 percent of her time is spent working in the community where meaningful relationships are key. Some of the favorite parts of her job include teaching SNAP-Ed to middle school and high school students. They also had great success with SNAP-Ed for WIC last summer, and she’s looking forward to refining the work for this upcoming summer. When asked about trends she anticipates, she believes food allergy education is going to be an upcoming trend because of the growing need.

Her advice for people new to the field? Read as much as possible, network, and learn from your peers and mentors. Health educators love to share what they know and help others grow, so maximize those opportunities. Adapting your plans and being flexible are important traits to have. She is excited to see what the future holds.

Facilitation and Training

We can all use tips on being better facilitators and trainers. New links have been posted and will continue to be expanded for both of these topics. Check them out: http://here.doh.wa.gov/professional-resources/workforce-development#Facilitation

Prescription Monitoring Program: Leaders for the Nation

The misuse of prescription pain medicine is one of the fastest growing health concerns in the country. Prescription Review is Washington’s new secure online database to manage prescriptions for controlled substances. It will help improve patient safety and public health. While many states have this program, including Idaho and Oregon, it is new to our state. Prescription dispensers have been entering information since October 2011 and providers were able to request this information as of January 2012.

The Washington State Department of Health developed nine new factsheets.  No other state has created frequently asked question (FAQ) sheets by profession. Very few states have created multiple provider factsheets. No other state has created “Quick Tips Sheets.” Alaska and Minnesota asked to adapt them for their states.  We expect to hear from more states. Our products include:

Overview Factsheets

• Dispenser factsheet

• Provider factsheet

• Public factsheet
   

FAQs by Profession

• Clinicians

• Law Enforcement

• Pharmacists

• Veterinarians

Quick Tips

• Dispensing and Setting up Accounts

• Querying and Reporting

As of today, the program has collected approximately 4,180,557 prescription records. These numbers show how important the program is and why we need educational tools to support providers and educate the public.

Agenda for Change

The Agenda for Change Workgroup was formed to support the implementation of the Agenda for Change. Priorities outlined in the agenda will guide the direction of Washington's governmental public health system in the next two to five years.

The three Agenda for Change subgroups have been drafting priorities and specific actions to most effectively improve the public's health. Those subgroups and their work are:

Communicable Disease and Other Health Threats Subgroup

The goal of this group is to provide guidance on best or standard practices around communicable disease threats. Its work is organized around the following questions:

• Immunizations - What are some best practices for assessing community immunizations practices?
• Capacity for communicable disease surveillance and response - What is our need to evaluate and streamline our communicable disease and surveillance and response system
• Informatics - Is it time to plan for an updated and integrated communicable disease and data collection system?

Healthy Communities and Environments Subgroup

The goal of this group is to provide guidance by focusing on policy and system efforts that foster healthy communities. Its work is organized around the following strategic areas:

• Tobacco-free living
• Healthy eating
• Healthy and safe physical environments
• Healthy starts
   

Public Health Partnering with the Health Care System Subgroup

The goal of this group is to identify ways public health can improve access to care and preventive services by partnering more effectively with the health care system. Its work is organized around the question: How shall public health partner more strategically with the health care system of the future to:

• Collect and share community health data to increase knowledge of health issues prevalent in the community.
• Compile data on community-wide or region-wide health care capacity.
• Publish community needs assessments: partner with hospitals and other provider groups to develop community health needs assessments.
• Monitor health care access issues.
• Share information and educate on effective practices; examples include efforts to create regional consortia and efforts to develop clinically integrated health systems
• Create ongoing networks among providers, public health and hospitals to deliberate about problems and possible solutions

The Agenda for Change Workgroup will reconvene its next meeting in early 2012 to review the subgroups’ work and progress and begin looking at cross-cutting themes, gaps and funding. For more information, contact the co-chairs or workgroup members, or go to: http://www.doh.wa.gov/phip/workgroup/a4c/a4c/a4c.htm

Health and Human Services Announces Campaign to Save 1 Million Lives

Heart disease—It kills one in three Americans, causes over two million heart attacks and strokes a year, lowers the quality and years of life, and affects racial and ethnic minorities disproportionately. In addition, it accounts for $1 of every $6 spent on health care, costs nearly $450 billion a year, and the cost is expected to triple in the next twenty years.

In response last September, the Secretary of Health and Human Services declared heart attack and stroke prevention the nation’s top health priority. She announced the launch of the Million Hearts Campaign, an effort to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes over the next five years by implementing effective, cost-efficient campaigns. Goals of the campaign align with Healthy People 2020 heart disease and stroke targets. The campaign’s two main goals are to:

• Empower people to make healthy choices through community-based programs aimed at reducing smoking, improving nutrition, and reducing high blood pressure.
• Improving care in the management of the “ABCS” in the clinical realm—aspirin for high-risk patients, blood-pressure control, cholesterol management, and smoking cessation.

To address the numerous contributing factors of heart disease, Health and Human Services created a comprehensive coalition of partners from public health, health care, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector.

Million Hearts will use, focus, and align with existing cardiovascular disease prevention programs and activities in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as well as other policies, and will not require new public funding. It will be coordinated with policies such as:

• Community Transformation Grants
• Physician Quality Reporting System
• Medicare Shared Savings Program
• Coverage of Clinical Preventive Services
• Essential Health Benefit Package

For more information on the Million Hearts Campaign, please visit http://millionhearts.hhs.gov/about_mh.html.

Children with Special Health Care Needs Taking Charge of Their Health

In this newsletter we wanted to highlight a set of four companion materials with an important topic area. Developed in October 2011 by the Washington State Department of Health, the four materials listed below are to help children with special health care needs gradually transition from adolescence to adulthood. The first booklet is for children aged 12-15, the second is for children 15-18, the third for young adults 18+, and the last is for parents of children with special health care needs. For more information about the materials, please contact Cathie Tedrick in the Children with Special Health Care Needs Program at Cathie.Tedrick@doh.wa.gov or 360-236-3543.

• Going from Teen 2 Tween
• Your Life, Your Health, Your Way
• Young Adults Transition Plan: Your Future/Your Life
• Planning for a Healthy Transition: A Family Transition Plan

New Upcoming Trainings

Below are upcoming events that have been added to the H.E.R.E. website since the last newsletter was released. This is a new feature of the H.E.R.E. newsletter.

• Joining Voices and Visions: A Regional, Multi-System Approach for Assessing Community Health Needs – Webinar
• National Alliance on Mental Illness National Convention – Seattle, WA
• Ask, Screen, Intervene – Seattle, WA
• STD Update for Clinicians – Yakima, WA
• 2012 Reproductive Health Conference – Portland Oregon
• NACCHO Annual Conference – Los Angeles, CA
• 35th Annual Rural Health Conference – Denver, CO
• Association for Community Health Improvement Annual Conference – Denver, CO
• STD Update for Clinicians With Optional Clinical Practicum – Anchorage, AK
• Promoting Intergenerational and Environmental Health Across the Lifespan – New York, NY
• National Health Impact Assessment Meeting – Washington, D.C.
• 15th Annual Health Education Advocacy Summit – Washington, D.C.
• National Health Policy Conference – Washington, D.C.
• American Public Health Association Midyear Meeting – Charlotte, NC

Links to external resources are provided as a public service and do not imply endorsement by the Washington State Department of Health.