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Director of Health Promotion Board Report
Family Health Department
Child Repro Sexual Health
(Manager, Sue Kocela)
March public/professional education activities include the following:
Two 2-hour workshops:
Picky Eater – Feeding Kids Right: March 5, Windsor
Disciplining Your Preschooler: March 12, Leamington
Small workshops at Ontario Early Years Centres (city & county)
Three Prenatal series: 2 Windsor; 1 Leamington
Weekly classes at Building Blocks For Better Babies (BBBB) in four locations (2 city & 2 county)
Three weekly Just For Moms & Babies Series (2 Windsor, 1 Leamington)
Parent-Child Mother Goose Program (Leamington)
Weekly breastfeeding clinic at Windsor WECHU.
Prevention of Pre-term Labour/Low Birth Weight Initiative
Packages have been developed and will be distributed in March to participating diagnostic imaging centers to give to pregnant women receiving their first fetal ultrasound. The packages contain the following: 1) information about our prenatal classes, 2) a static cling outlining the signs & symptoms of pre-term labour, and 3) a magnetic photo frame promoting healthy lifestyles in pregnancy and WECHU programs/services. Women will be encouraged to insert a photo of their baby’s ultrasound into the photo frame for placement on their fridge. The frame is entitled “Creating a Masterpiece”.
Translations of Feeding Your Baby
Arabic, Chinese and Spanish translations of Feeding Your Baby were purchased in December with NCB funding. They will be formatted and ready to distribute in March.
Prevention of Childhood Obesity
A physician toolkit, entitled “Promoting Healthy weights in Children 0-12 Years: Toolkit for Physicians,” was distributed in December. A brief evaluation of the toolkit has been mailed out. Responses are being returned by fax and will be analyzed this month.
The team is in the process of developing a 3-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 public health nurses will pilot a series in April.
With school board approval, the new “Food & Fun: Tykes on the Move” resource is being reviewed by several kindergarten teachers in Windsor-Essex County. The resource is a JK-SK Cross Curriculum Resource Manual, funded by Health Action Windsor-Essex, developed to assist teachers to incorporate messages about healthy eating, physical activity and turning off the screens into the kindergarten curricula. The kit contains a wide variety of resources (lesson plans, templates, Family Newsletter articles, CD, DVD, food cards, “Children on the Move” book, and Health Canada resources). Once reviewed, the resource will be revised and distributed to all JK-SK teachers.
Healthy Baby/Healthy Children Program
(Managers, Elizabeth Kinnaird-Iler and Shirley Davies)
Electronic Charting
All HBHC staff are now involved in electronic documentation at some level. Some are well experienced and some have recently begun the orientation process. Over the next few months additional charting will be done electronically, in order to facilitate team communication and quality service coordination by HBHC staff.
HBHC 10th Anniversary Celebration
Planning is well underway for the HBHC 10th anniversary celebration. The tentative target date is March 2008, with a celebration held in the Windsor and Leamington offices. The goals of the event include:
- Increase public awareness of the HBHC program
- Acknowledge contributions of community partners
- Acknowledge past and present clients
- Celebrate struggles, successes and accomplishments
Windsor Police Presentation
Last month, staff received a presentation from Constable Lisa Gallant on staying safe when working alone. This topic was particularly relevant for HBHC staff since much of their work is done independently in client homes. Information focused on how to identify an unsafe person or place, how to remain safe while in the home, importance of exiting the home if feeling unsafe, safe vehicle parking, drug use in the community and ways to identify it in clients.
Physician Outreach Project
The final project report was completed January 31 and forwarded to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services. Participating physicians provided positive feedback and therefore, will be asked if interested in ongoing participation. As well, approximately 6-8 additional primary care providers will be invited to participate in the coming months. The project yielded increased prenatal referrals. Future project strategies will focus on working closely with physicians and their office staff to increase the number of early ID referrals.
Comprehensive School Health Department
(Manager, Vacant)
Hocus Pocus Vanish Smoking
was a success again this year. It was held during National Non-Smoking Week. We had 2,748 grade 4 students and 258 teachers and chaperones from across the city and county attend this annual magic show event. It was held at Migration Hall in Kingsville for the county students and at Walkerville high school for the city students. Walkerville drama students performed pre and post show vignettes with anti-tobacco messages. The drama students used their Smoke Free Ontario high school grant to produce these skits. The assistance of the OPP and WPD community police and their auxiliary officers, ensured students arrived safely and were dismissed quickly. We look forward to hosting this event again in 2008.
Where's The Shade?
The Windsor Essex County Health Unit has invited grade 4 students to participate in the “Where’s the Shade?” contest. The purpose is to increase awareness of the need for shade when outdoors. Grade 4 teachers are asked to have their students draw a picture related to shade and its importance in skin cancer prevention. The winning piece of artwork will be reproduced onto a T-shirt and distributed to the winning student’s entire class. First, second and third place schools will each receive a BIG shade tree to be planted by the City of Windsor on school property. Research shows that even one severe sunburn in childhood can double a person’s risk of developing skin cancer later in life. One in three cancers in Ontario is a skin cancer (Cancer Care Ontario, 2005). Shade can reduce ultraviolet rays by 50% or more (World Health Organization, 2003).
All schools who participated in “Where’s the Shade?” initiative will be provided with a Frisbee activity package. This package consisted of UV sensitive Frisbees, lesson plans for Frisbee activities such as Frisbee baseball, ultimate Frisbee and aerobic Frisbee golf. Also included were Health Canada’s Teachers' Guide to Physical Activity for Children age 6 to 9, sun safety posters, and postcards. When students are physically active outdoors they need to protect themselves from the harmful rays of the sun. To reinforce the message, the Frisbees in this kit change colour when exposed to UV rays. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention states “regular physical activity in childhood and adolescence improves strength and endurance, helps build healthy bones and muscles, helps control weight, reduces anxiety and stress, increases self-esteem, and may improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Positive experiences with physical activity at a young age help lay the basis for being regularly active throughout life.”
Other community put reach included a PHN and Dental educator co-presenting a seminar on the Health Unit programs and services to dental students at St. Clair College, the first Jumpstart Community Partnership Committee Meeting at an Optimist Club. A number of PHNs from the school team attended a workshop on developing communication campaigns and the Health Action Annual Meeting.
Youth & Steroids Project
The educational materials for secondary schools - posters, Coach’s teaching booklet, and student wallet cards will be promoted in April for educators and coaches to order upon request. The School Board Liaison Committee has approved the distribution strategy and WECSSA will participate in the promotion of the materials.
“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 14-week program will begin on March 21, 2007. Families: 13 parents and 14 children - will participate in the comprehensive sessions. CEASE will function as the community coalition for implementation and facilitation.
Information Resources Department
(Manager, Vacant)
Website Activity
Website Activity
The WECHU website main page layout design is complete and a meeting between the Web Editorial Committee and HUMAT is scheduled for March 1 to make final decisions. We have received some pro bono thirty-second radio ads to promote our services and the web site.
Evaluation and analysis projects
RRFSS Tobacco Enforcement Data Dictionary
RRFSS Health Info DD Review
RRFSS Outline of Introductory Analysis Document
Physician Outreach Evaluation
Healthy Weights E-learning Literature Search
Workplace Employee Survey
RRFSS Family Abuse Report
YTA In-service on Evaluation
Sun Safety Data Analysis
Steroid Use Analysis
Team projects
Hand washing resources and campaign
Tobacco
Just for Dads booklet
Effects of Woman Abuse on Children pamphlet
Fact Sheets
Food handling cards
PPMD document
HBHC magnet
Let's Talk Sex pamphlet
HBHC certificate
Walking booklets
FYB flyer
Alcohol and Chronic Disease booklet
Shade booklet
Steroid campaign
HBHC Low Literacy resource
Driven to Quit 2007
YAA Speaking With the Media presentation
Nutrition Month 2007
TOTS updates
Feeding Your Baby translations
In General
We are in the process of responding to the new draft Public Health Standards, due to the ministry March 9th. I have attended several teleconferences sponsored by various provincial groups and all managers have obtained input from their respective teams. So far the general consensus is the new standards are much less prescriptive than the previous ones but they will be implemented with protocols that have not yet been drafted. The need for local health status data is a cross cutting theme throughout the document. To that end I have re-advertised to fill our vacant epidemiologist position again. There is also a larger emphasis on community awareness as a foundation to the targeted education strategies and direct intervention seems to be limited to vulnerable groups. The majority of groups are very happy with the permissiveness of the new standards that allows specific local needs to be addressed.
Respectfully submitted,
Liz Haugh, Director