Family Health Department
Child Repro Sexual Health
(Manager, Sue Kocela)

January public/professional education activities include the following:     

1. One 2-hour workshop: Toilet Learning: January 30, Essex

2. Small workshops at Ontario Early Years Centres (city & county)
3. Prenatal series: Windsor
4. Weekly classes at Building Blocks For Better Babies (BBBB) in four locations (2 city & 2 county)
5. Three weekly Just For Moms & Babies Series (2 Windsor & 1 Essex)
6. Weekly breastfeeding clinic at Windsor WECHU

Prevention of Low Birth Weight

The team is hosting a PTCC workshop entitled “Smoking Cessation for Pregnant Women” on January 26 for staff and community partners. Women who smoke during pregnancy have an increased risk of low birth weight. This workshop will provide participants with the knowledge, skills and resources to support pregnant women to quit or reduce smoking. This workshop will also promote use of our new “Smoke-Free Beginning!” resource.

Prenatal Consensus Document

The team is launching the new Prenatal Consensus Document at a workshop on January 29. Prenatal educators throughout Windsor & Essex County have been invited to learn about the document and receive a hard copy of the resource that will also be on-line at the health unit. The purpose of the Consensus Document, developed in collaboration with community partners, is to promote a general agreement or consensus among prenatal educators in Windsor-Essex County on prenatal course content. The document focuses on topics that prenatal women want to know to help them prepare for childbirth and life after their baby arrives. Some research indicates that women who have realistic expectations regarding childbirth and life with their baby may have reduced risks of experiencing a postpartum mood disorder (PPMD). This project, including the surveys used to determine women’s needs, was implemented as part of the Early Child Development, PPMD initiative.

Healthy Baby/Healthy Children Program
(Managers, Elizabeth Kinnaird-Iler and Shirley Davies)

2007 will be a busy year for Healthy Babies, Healthy Children staff.  They will continue to provide universal service to all families following the birth of a new baby (48 hour postpartum phone call and home visit if accepted).  They will also receive screens on prenatal clients and children up to 6 years of age, provide follow-up assessment and linkage to community services, and offer on-going home visits to eligible families.

With the evaluation of the Physician Outreach Project complete, HBHC will look at continuing service to those physicians already involved in the project and expanding the service to other interested physicians in the community.

The 2006/2007 HBHC Directory of Services is complete and has been distributed to community partners – partner feedback has reinforced the value of this directory.

HBHC staff, in consultation with IRD, is in the process of developing a low literacy resource for use with our prenatal clients who receive home visiting services.

Over the next month, HBHC staff will be attending some community presentations on important topics such as Smoking Cessation for Pregnant Women (a full day workshop) sponsored by the Program Training and Consultation Centre in collaboration with the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, Child Health, Reproductive and Sexual Health, and a two-hour presentation on Child Welfare Transformation and Bill 210, hosted by the Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society. 

Comprehensive School Health Department
(Manager, Vacant)

Physical Activity

Recess Revival 2006- all documents and receipts from all schools are in and complete.

Revisions for the Recess Revival 2007 packages are being worked on and should be ready for April distributions. Tykes on the Move for the pilot schools is in process; the school nurses for these schools will be notified shortly.  Family Health hopes to do this partnership with CSH department in early winter 2007.  Currently we are working with IRD and the CSH clerk on the TOTS 2007 revisions for the grade 3 and 6 students.

The Call to Action (formally Heart Health) will be launched in January.

The Annual General Meeting will be held on the afternoon of Thursday, February 22^nd, 2007. Mr. Rossi, CEO of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, and Mr. Goodhand, CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society, Ontario Division, will be talking about working together to develop common messages around the three modifiable risk factors for chronic disease:  smoking, physical inactivity, and unhealthy eating.

Kiss’n Ride

Further to the discussion at last month’s Board meeting, this project is an innovative injury prevention program designed to address student safety and morning traffic congestion at schools within the Greater Essex County District School Board, the Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board, and Le Conseil Scolaire de district des Ĕcoles Catholiques du Sud-Ouest. The program relies on parent and student volunteers to supervise the children from the time they leave the car until they reach the assigned area on the school property.   The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit along with many community partners are pleased to be celebrating four successful years with our “Kiss’n Ride” initiative.  Approximately 60 schools have joined the program since its inception.  This represents 51% of elementary schools in Windsor-Essex County.  We have observed that less county schools are involved due to the majority of students being bused.  New schools being constructed are addressing this traffic issue during the design phase.  The Windsor and Essex Optimist Club continues to provide long-term financial support, which enables this program to supply manuals, safety vests, umbrellas, and activity books for each school.

Teaching Healthy Sexuality Workshop (Teachers) November 28^th, 2006. 

Fifty-three grade 8 and 9 teachers attended the in-service and a train-the-trainer workshop with activities they can use in the classroom to teach sexual health and the most up to date sexual health information on the age of consent, post exposure prophylaxis, and the H.P.V. vaccine approved in Canada.  Evaluations were mostly positive.

Talking to Your Kids About Sexuality (Parents) November 1, 2006

• This event was not widely marked and we had a very small group of parents, only 4 attended, we had 7 signed up to attend. 
• IRD may assist the school team with a parent’s needs assessment to see how parents want information about talking to their child about sexuality and we may redesign how we get that information out.

World AIDS Day Youth Conference

What a hit!  We had over 200 participants at the Caboto Club on November 30^th learning what HIV is, how it is spread, how one can protect themselves and messages about self empowerment.  Teachers from the GECDSB verbalized that the event was great for their students and that they plan to bring them year after year.  The AIDS Committee is the lead agency on this project with partners from the Health Unit, HIV Care Clinic, Sexual Assault Crisis Centre, and the Teen Health Centre.

In Class Student Sexual Health Workshops

• grade 8 and grade 9
• 25 elementary workshops are booked from January to June 2007
• 5 Adolescent Sexual Health Programs (high school) week long programs have been booked
• A Health Unit public health nurse, a Teen Health Centre health promoter, an AIDS Committee of Windsor health promoter, and a Sexual Assault Crisis Centre social worker will facilitate workshops.

Youth Action Alliance

Over the last few months, the Tobacco youth action alliance has organized and attended various events. The first thing we planned was the Parent and Staff 'meet and greet' at the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit.  We also attended training in London for advocacy hosted by Youth Advocacy Training Institute.  A week after the London training, we attended the Ontario Tobacco Control Conference in Niagara Falls which was extremely informative.  We are also currently planning some activities for National Non-Smoking Week 2007.  Submitted by Sabahat Qadeer, Peer Leader

Youth & Steroids Project – steroid posters have been focus tested with several groups of male athletes, and have been well received with only minor changes needed. The campaign launch is targeted for April 2006.

  “Strengthening Families for the Future”

This is a prevention program for families of children between the ages of 7 and 11 who may be at risk for substance abuse. The program involves the whole family, not just the parents or the children alone. Facilitator training will be done in February. Implementation for the 14 weekly sessions will be later this spring. CEASE will function as the community coalition for implementation.

Information Resources Department
(Manager, Vacant)

Website Activity

There were 9,077 unique visitors to the Health Unit website during last part of December and early January for a total number of visits:  11,409.

In addition to a series of new projects, project support continues for the following communications projects:

• Woman Abuse initiative – display units for the public
• Design and revisions of the PPMD Booklet for dads
• Injury Prevention media planning for 2007
• Nutrition month campaign 2007 – CSH
• Physical Punishment Booklet Design

Evaluation support is currently being provided for:

Steroid Project Needs Assessment –(CSH) – focus groups with students and coach surveys

iWorkplace Health Evaluation –coordination of the workplace survey (U of W) and in-depth interviews

iHBHC Outreach project:  evaluation of this pilot project

i Spanking Alternatives Booklet – focus testing the booklet prior to approval and distribution.

In conjunction with some of our community partners, our local LHIN and the U of W, we are submitting a proposal to the Public Health Agency of Canada for a grant to develop a web based local Health Status database.  In the absence of an epidemiologist we are lacking current local health statistics to assist our community partners with program planning and evaluation.  The last one was published in 2000 so hopefully 2008 will be the next one.  It is anticipated that it will take about a year to do a needs assessment and compile the data.  If unsuccessful we will pursue this with cost shared funds that we currently have.

In General

We welcomed eight fourth year university students to our agency this semester as compared to fifteen last semester.  We are looking at a means to maintain higher numbers in the future by placing two students in each department and having staff share the preceptor duties.  I am precepting two masters nursing students who will be assisting us with various projects that have been inactive.

Please accept my regrets for this meeting. I have a conflict with an OPHA meeting with ministry officials and the OPHA Board meeting.  Please call or e-mail me if you have any questions about this report.

Respectfully submitted,

Liz Haugh, Director