MCHB Divisions and Offices

Jack Tenenbaum: Good morning. Good news, I’m the last speaker before lunch. I’m Jack Tenenbaum. I’m the Acting Director of the Office of Program Development, and I’m going to acquaint you with our office very quickly, and hopefully you’ll be able to ask me questions this morning and approach me during the next three days to clear up anything you might have questions about. I’m the Acting Director and I’m the Bureau’s Evaluation Officer as well. We have a fairly small staff, and one of our new staff members is here today; Pam Kelly who just joined our staff is here getting her orientation as well. As you can see from the organizational chart, we work with all of the Bureau’s offices and divisions. We work with the Agency and we work with other organizations outside of HRSA as well to try to coordinate the activities within the Bureau. We do serve a coordinating function and our office, as you saw in the organizational chart that’s in your packet, we are a staff office to the office of the Associate Administrator. We are responsible for coordinating a number of activities throughout the Bureau, including planning and policy analysis, program evaluation and performance, including those performance measures that you all love so much, regulations, including federal register notices, all the OMB clearances, the Government Performance and Results Act measures. We look at cross cutting issues as well as providing technical assistance throughout the Bureau. We have assisted in preparing the Strategic Plan and the whole area of planning. We look at various policy issues. We will have a policy issuance coming out very shortly. I’ve been saying this for a while, but it’s been stuck. But we’re hoping that it will come out very soon on third party reimbursement, and issues of MCH programs and what they can do in terms of third party reimbursement, especially in relation to Medicaid. We also prepare the GIPRA report and the plan, that’s an annual activity, and we assist with the budget planning projections and the allocations. In terms of policy, we are the focal point in the Bureau for coordination with HRSA’s managed care office. We take a look at the state child insurance issues and Medicaid issues as well, the waivers. We represent the Bureau on the (inaudible). We look at cross cutting issues here in policy, and we manage, as well, the Library Services Cooperative Agreement, but we’ll get to that in a minute. We play a central role in accountability in the programs. At the state level, the guidance that was developed some time ago, contains performance measures, core performance measures and other measures as well, and these are the measures that we use, not only internally, but we report up through the agency to the Office of Management and Budget. That report goes through the department to the Congress. These are very important activities. These are very important measures. In fact, we have recently received the approval for using the measure once again from the Office of Management and Budget. We also coordinate the PART response. PART is the Program Assessment Rating Tool that is used by the Office of Management and Budget. They come through, they look at the particular program, they give us a rating, and then we take action. Our offices also place the lead role in evaluation of program activities throughout the Bureau. We Chair the Bureau’s Evaluation Coordinating Committee. We develop cross cutting evaluation studies. We coordinate evaluations throughout the Bureau, and we provide technical assistance to MCHB programs dealing with evaluation development, looking at the research questions that ought to be asked, the hypotheses, etcetera. We also work with other organizations outside the Bureau and outside of government, including AMCHIP and CityMatCH. We provide technical assistance in managed care. We were instrumental in developing pediatric specifications through a contract with George Washington University. We speak at grantee meetings all the time about performance measures and evaluations, and we serve on several technical panels. We are developing that managed care and third party reimbursement policy issue. We provide technical assistance to a wide variety of programs inside the Bureau. We have just gone through a training on EPSDT, and we work with other agency components on a wide variety of issues as well. We do all the OMB clearances, and that’s just a joy, I want you to know. It’s one of the highlights of the job. The Library Services contract we thought would be of interested to you, especially, since it is a web-based resource library in which all projects reports and final products are posted, and this is available to you to use as a resource. So in conclusion, we do lots of stuff. We work primarily coordinating inside the Bureau and sometimes we deal with grantees as well. Many of you were on the last MCHcom.com call that dealt with a customer satisfaction survey we’re doing. We did one several years ago that dealt with our performance judged by you. We’re now launching into the field, or we will be launching into the field shortly, a customer satisfaction survey dealing with those people who received care from MCH sponsored sites, organizations, and we’re looking for, we’re still looking for, additional sites to take part in that. We’re looking for a total of 10 states, two sites per state, that can give us 250 responses. The survey takes less than a minute to fill out. We have it both in English and in Spanish, one side and the other. We want to make sure that what we do is acceptable. We can make it as good as we can, and this will help us do that. So if you’d like to volunteer, come and see me during the next three days. Occasionally we get to deal with grantees directly, but most of our work is within the Bureau. Are there any questions?

Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible). Do you have a website for (inaudible).

Jack Tenenbaum: Yes we do have a website, but if you contact me, I’ll get it for you, and, in fact, I’ll have it tomorrow. You can go to lunch early.