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Director of Health Promotion Board Report
Family Health Department
Child Repro Sexual Health
(Manager, Sue Kocela)
April public/professional education activities include the following:
Three 2-hour workshops:
Precious Cargo– What You Need to Know About Car Seat Safety: April 19, Windsor
Stress Management for Parents of Preschoolers: April 23, Essex
Understanding Preschooler Behaviour: April 24, Windsor
Small workshops at Ontario Early Years Centres (city & county)
Two Prenatal series: Windsor
Weekly classes at Building Blocks For Better Babies (BBBB) in four locations (2 city & 2 county)
Four weekly Just For Moms & Babies Series (2 Windsor, 1 Leamington, 1 Belle River)
Parent-Child Mother Goose Program (Leamington)
One presentation for Early Childhood Professionals: Implementing Developmental Screening Tools, April 11, Windsor
Weekly breastfeeding clinic at Windsor WECHU
Prevention of Childhood Obesity
The team has received a grant of $2,750 from the Regional Cancer Prevention Network to cover the costs of printing up to 10,000 obesity prevention booklets. The booklet, targeting parents and caregivers of children birth to 6 years, is in its first draft. We have also asked Health Action Windsor-Essex for funds to translate the resource into Chinese and Arabic.
We are also in the process of developing a three-week series of classes for parents of children 6 to 12 months utilizing the Reading, Rhythm & Movement kits. Community partners with ECE training will review the teaching kit and a series will be piloted by PHNs in April. The kits will continue to be distributed to Healthy Babies Healthy Children clients by family home visitors.
Safety
Safe Kids Canada has announced that it will provide us with a grant of $250 to assist with a drowning prevention initiative for Safe Kids Week, May 28 – June 3, 2007. Additional education initiatives are planned for June and July at the Ontario Early Years Centres.
Dental
On April 2 the Dental team officially became part of the Repro/Child Health Team within the Family Health Department. This program was formerly housed under Clinical Services, but since it is solidly within the child health standards, it was decided that this makes a better fit for integration of child health services with closer links to Healthy Babies Healthy Children and Comprehensive School Health.
Prenatal
Sue Kocela and I met with VON last month to assess the potential impact of their decreased United Way funding on the community and the possible role of the Health Unit to pick up the slack as per our mandatory programs. VON is currently appealing the United Way decision and we have drafted a letter (attached) indicating that we have neither the mandate nor the capacity to absorb all late pregnancy services provided via registration fee to 600 couples a year. However, we may have a responsibility to pick up a potential early prenatal series that they offer to 120 couples a year at no charge. There are several options as to how this could be achieved and we are in discussions about various options that could be implemented if they are unsuccessful with their appeal.
Healthy Baby/Healthy Children Program
(Managers, Elizabeth Kinnaird-Iler and Shirley Davies)
On March 28th, 29th, and 30th, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services hosted a provincial meeting for Managers and Directors of the Healthy Babies Healthy Children’s program and for Nurse Practitioners working in the Prenatal/Postnatal Nurse Practitioner project. Shirley Davies and I were able to attend. The meeting provided updates on the following topics: Best Start Plan, Enhanced 18 Month Well Baby Visit, new Blind/Low Vision Program, Postpartum Mood Disorder Study by Cindy-Lee Dennis, System Integration, Vicarious Trauma, Relationships with CAS, and program and clinical sharing among Nurse Practitioners. As expected, the longitudinal evaluation of the HBHC program continues to demonstrate very positive results. There a few new faces at the Ministry of Children and Youth Services and it was nice to be able to meet them in person.
The infusion of funding into various children’s programs was discussed. There are no opportunities for public health to tap into any of these allocations, however the HBHC program did receive an additional 5 million dollars.
With the assistance of IRD, staff continues to work on development of low literacy materials for use with prenatal clients. Many HBHC clients are higher risk due to low socioeconomic factors, limited education, isolation, and recent immigration. Low literacy materials will help clients better understand the information and recommendations of prenatal care, which will help to promote the development of a healthy baby.
HBHC Managers are working closely with the Program Evaluation Specialist to explore the next phase of the Physician Outreach Project evaluation, namely the flow and care received by prenatal clients once the physician refers them to the HBHC program.
Family Health has applied to participate in the Cultural Competence Project being initiated by Multi Cultural Council (MCC). This project looks at how to improve direct service to new or recent immigrants. If accepted, Family Health is proposing to look at services provided by the Nurse Practitioner, HBHC, group parenting classes, dental clinic services.
Comprehensive School Health Department(Manager, Theresa Marentette)
I am pleased to welcome Theresa Marentette to the Health Promotion Management team. She has spent her first few weeks getting her head around the complexity of projects juggled by the school nurses and has embraced it all with much enthusiasm. Just a few of the projects are highlighted here.
Eat Smart
We are happy to report that two more secondary schools in Windsor-Essex County are receiving their Eat Smart “Award of Excellence” in recognition of their school cafeterias’ exceptional standards in nutrition and food safety. Leamington District Secondary School received their award in March, and École secondaire catholique l’Essor will be receiving their award at a ceremony in April.
Sexual Health
The school team is working with Walkerville High School to implement a sexual health program for students who are intellectually impaired. The program, consisting of four sessions will deal with topics such as puberty, anatomy, healthy relationships, birth control, and STI/HIV. The first session on puberty was well received and the teacher will reinforce the information.
The team also attended a presentation on Date Rape sponsored by the CAW Women’s Group. The Health Unit set up a sexuality display and provided resources regarding preconception, birth control, sexually transmitted infections, clinical services, and the HPV vaccine. Approximately 170 teens and parents attended this event.
Youth Action Alliance
‘Knot in My Life’, the Windsor-Essex Youth Action Alliance partnered with other
Youth Action Alliances from Southwestern Ontario to organize a “No Bull concert against the Tobacco Industry”. The concert took place on March 24th at the Western Fair in London. The purpose of the concert was to educate youth about how the tobacco industry targets youth through marketing tactics. Performers included Canadian Idol finalist Aaron Walpole, singer/songwriter Sara Westbrook, and several local bands. Walter Gretzky also attended and delivered a special message about how smoking has affected his family.
Sun Safety
More than thirty schools participated in the “Where’s the Shade?” initiative and will be provided with a Frisbee activity package. This package consists of UV sensitive Frisbees and lesson plans for Frisbee activities such as Frisbee golf and baseball. The Frisbees change colour when exposed to UV rays, reinforcing the message that when students are physically active outdoors they need to protect themselves from the harmful rays of the sun. The package also included Health Canada’s Teacher’s Guide to Physical Activity for Children ages 6 to 9, sun safety posters, and postcards.
Information Resources Department
(Manager, Vacant)
The IRD team has expanded to include two new Information Coordinators to be imbedded in the Comprehensive School Health and the Child Health teams. They will provide front line support for the respective departments’ communication needs but maintain membership in the IRD team.
Our Communication Specialist attended a Ministry of Health Promotion workshop on Communications and Public Education on Tuesday, March 27, 2007. A diverse group of professionals from health, education, non-profit, and private industry shared presentations, resources, and lessons learned about provincial and local public education and social marketing campaigns. The symposium provided an excellent forum to network and learn from colleagues at the Ministry of Health Promotion and other health units throughout the province. Before the symposium began, Minister Jim Watson made a brief appearance and spoke with some of the delegates. When speaking to him, he indicated that he really enjoyed his visit in Essex for the Heather Crowe award and was very impressed with our work.
Website Activity
The revitalized website will be unveiled to the board at the May meeting. The Web Editorial Committee has provided valuable input to the development of the new site and IT and IRD are collaborating on posting content and developing protocols for teams to post their own content in a timely way.
In General
Last month two of the Masters students from the University attended our board meeting in addition to other management meetings as part of their generic orientation to public health. They have now completed their practicum with me and have compiled some data on barriers and supports for public health nurses to be preceptors to fourth year university students. On April 11 I hosted four first year Masters students and their Professor for a day of exposure to Health Promotion programs and public health in general.
During the last week of March I had the opportunity to attend some interesting meetings in Toronto. The Sudbury and London PHREDs sponsored a workshop to solicit input on the best model to provide Professional Development, Applied Research, and Knowledge Exchange with the new provincial Public Health Agency. The model chosen will have us working with our regional post- secondary education institutions in the Southwest but liaising with other organizations for specialty topics/issues.
A second conference sponsored by the MHLTC Nursing Secretariat focused on commonalities across the sectors to strengthen nursing human resource strategies. The nursing shortage is expected to continue and it is a challenge for every agency to recruit the highest quality applicants possible. Data from a system-wide study was released and it was nice to see public health segmented out as a separate entity from community health nursing. Respectfully submitted,
Liz Haugh, Director