Family Health DepartmentChild Repro Sexual Health(Manager, Sue Kocela)

June public/professional education activities include the following:  1. Two 2-hour workshops:
a. Understanding Toddler Behaviour: June 12, Essex
b. Precious Cargo – What You Need to Know About Car Seat Safety:  June 21, Windsor
2. Small workshops at Ontario Early Years Centres (city & county)
3. Three Prenatal series: 2 Windsor, 1 Leamington
4. Weekly classes at Building Blocks For Better Babies in 4 locations (2 city & 2 county)
5. Four weekly Just For Moms & Babies Series (2 Windsor, 1 A’burg, 1 Belle River)
6. Weekly breastfeeding clinic at Windsor WECHU

Parenting
On June 9, staff are providing workshops at two separate events: 1) the Windsor Essex County In-Home Child Care Providers Weekend Workshop and 2) the Foster Parents Society of Ontario Conference. Topics include Developmental Stages, Sleep & Picky Eaters. Plans are being developed with the City of Windsor to provide Train-the-Trainer Resiliency workshops for child care providers and others who teach parenting this fall.

SafeKids Week
On June 2, we held our second mall display at Leamington County Fair Mall for the SafeKids week drowning prevention initiative. May media coverage included articles in Windsor Parent, Windsor Star, radio & TV. Resources are being provided to Ontario Early Years Centres and other community partners.

Statistics

Intake Nurse

Dental

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

 Family Health specifically Healthy Babies Healthy Children and the Nurse Practitioner Prenatal/Postnatal Clinic have been accepted to participate in the Cultural Competence Project initiated by Multi-Cultural Council (MCC). Initially a staff member from MCC will present the concept of cultural competence and cultural diversity to staff.  Over the summer, this staff member will interview all HBHC staff and the NP to learn their view of how cultural differences impact and challenge the program. Once these interviews are complete, the team will select specific identified barriers, implement some strategies to address these barriers and evaluate the outcome. It is expected that the project will be completed within a year. The results and process will then be shared with other health unit programs.

Healthy Babies Healthy Children and the Nurse Practitioner work closely with the Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society and many high-risk families. Recently, Ontario Children’s Aid Societies have undergone transformation; this has resulted in changes to the way they work with families. On June 27th, a representative from WECAS will present to Family Health staff “differential response” – i.e. different levels and types of response dependent upon the reason for involvement.

Vicarious Trauma is now recognized as a reaction that can occur when practitioners are repeatedly exposed to the trauma and suffering of others.  Workers can develop symptoms of trauma themselves and begin to question their competence and to feel helpless in their ability to help others.  Recent training events have included this issue as an important part of the training for staff working in HBHC.  In Windsor-Essex, HBHC staff (Managers, Public Health Nurses and Family Home Visitors) have initiated a committee to look at how to prevent or alleviate vicarious trauma in the workplace. The ultimate goal is to ensure that practitioners are able to provide ongoing competent support and interventions to families with young children.

Nurse Practitioner

Program stats for the first quarter of this year (Jan. - March) are outlined below; for comparison purposes stats for the same time period in 2006 are included as well.

Aggressive Driving Initiative
The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit partnered with the Windsor Essex County Injury Prevention Coalition, Windsor Police, Ministry Of Transportation, Windsor Drive Test, and the University of Windsor to address the issue of aggressive driving. Vinyl card holders were designed and distributed to reach high- risk populations (age 18 to 29) in order to create awareness about aggressive driving. Aggressive driving is a factor in 1/3 of all reported motor vehicle collisions.

SMARTRISK No Regrets program
This is a non-profit injury prevention peer-led initiative to help teens choose smart risks and prevent injury.  The primary goal is to train youth leaders to implement injury prevention activities and events in their schools focusing on SMARTRISK five key messages (Buckle Up, Look First, Wear the Gear, Get Trained, and Drive Sober).
The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit collaborated with SMARTRISK and Health Canada for two local high schools to participate in a two day “SMARTRISK No Regrets” workshop. This program is being offered in 26 high schools across Canada.

Grade 8 Healthy Sexuality ProgramEvaluation of the fall Healthy Sexuality Teacher workshop and Resource Manual is in progress. All teachers who attended the workshop were invited to participate in an online survey. Feedback from the survey will assist with the planning of future workshops and development of resources.  In addition, the Adolescent Sexual Health Program for Grade 9 students completes its third year in the public high schools. The program includes topics such as healthy relationships, birth control and sexually transmitted infections. The program is facilitated by a public health nurse and includes partners from the Teen Health Centre, AIDS Committee of Windsor, and the Sexual Assault Crisis Centre.

Knot in My Life- Youth Action Alliance
All YAA Peer leaders attended the 2nd Annual Take Action Summit in Ottawa on May 11-13, 2007.  During the Summit, peer leaders participated in sessions that covered various topics: advocacy, skill building, leadership, cessation, and technical skills. Guest speakers included: Jim Watson, Patrick Reynolds, and Justin Trudeau.

On May 26, “Knot in My Life” had a display at Devonshire Mall. The purpose was to educate teens about the harmful effects of tobacco industry products. “Knot In My Life” also performed a brief demonstration every hour. The demonstration reflected the number of people in Ontario who die daily from tobacco related illnesses.

Information Resources Department
(Manager, Vacant)

For the past few weeks IRD was very busy helping with the plans for the alPHa meeting. The communication team designed and ordered promotional information and the entire conference agenda brochure and patiently coped with all the last minute revisions to resources and media information. 

This past month we were able to assist the Windsor Star with some health status data for their feature on Fitness in Our Community. It is a tribute to the skills of our Program Evaluation Specialist, Dr. Julie Fraser that we are able to respond to these requests .We look forward to the arrival of our new Epidemiologist to be able to automatically provide health status data.

alPHa Conference

I would like to thank the Health Unit planning team for the alPHa conference for all their support and will do so individually.  However, special thanks is due to the board members who participated in the conference. Tom Bain, Mike Holdsworth, and Ron McDermott who attended the conference sessions and Bill Allison and Lynda Monik who joined us for the Awards Dinner, and a special thanks to Tom Bain who attended almost the entire conference and moderated a session on government relations with one of the key note speakers. All the delegates had warm remarks about our community and the conference.

Respectfully submitted,

Liz Haugh, Director