Introduction and Welcome

CASSIE LAUVER: Good morning, everyone. If we could have people start coming in and sitting down, I think we’re ready to go this morning. Good morning. I’m Cassie Lauver, and I direct the division of State and Community Health. I feel like I’m echoing in here. It’s a big room. You can’t hear? Good morning. I’m Cassie Lauver, and I direct the Division of State and Community Health and Maternal and Child Health Bureau. I want to welcome everyone to this year’s federal-state partnership meeting. This year, the focus of the meeting is on research to practice and we know that there are many areas that people are involved in as state directors, at the community level, (inaudible) grantees, MCHB grantees, that are involved in taking what’s out there in research and putting it into practice. So I can tell you that there were no shortages of people volunteering to showcase their initiatives, and so I think we have a very exciting meeting this year in being able to really demonstrate the partnership between the state level and the federal level, in what we’re doing, and particularly around those things that we find are state-of-the-art at this particular time. One of the other benefits of this meeting, I think, is the ability to come together and meet with each other. And so we’ve done a couple of things this year that hopefully will help in getting people together. And the first is something new that we’re going to try this year, is for lunch today, rather than have lunch in a (inaudible) kind of session, we’ve worked with the hotel and we’ve been able to get rooms for each of the ten regions. So the federal people who are not with a region, I don’t know what you’re going to do for lunch. No, we have plans for that, too. But we do have, what we have, and we have this posted on the bulletin board. We do have a message board out front, so if people are wanting to check to see if they have messages, you can check the message board, and it’s to my left as you go out into the rotunda area. But what will be there will be a schedule for lunches by region. So I can read this to you quickly, but you should probably check the board so you’ll know where to go for lunch. And for Region 1, you’re going to be in the Cherry Room. Region 2 will be in the Terrace Room. Region 3 will be in Magnolia A. Region 4 Magnolia B. Region 5 in the Terrace Room. Region 6 in Walnut B. Region 7 in Plaza B. Region 8 in Ash. Region 9 in Walnut A, and Region 10 in Plaza B. So if you didn’t get that, just at break, or after this morning’s session, check the bulletin board outside and you’ll see where they are. Also joining the states and the region will be the project officers from the bureau for the states in that region, as well as the MCHB staff that are here that also have liaisons. For the rest of the speakers and staff and Plaza 1, 2, and 3, I believe are at least at this end of the ballroom will have tables there set up for people who won’t be meeting with them, with the regions. But I think that that will, one, provide an opportunity to get together, and have the time to interact with states and regions. Many states asked for the ability to get together at these meetings, and oftentimes they’re planned around breakfast, which sometimes doesn’t work so well when people are not quite as awake over breakfast as they might be for lunch. And this should be an opportunity to get together that way. We also, for a little extra-curricular entertainment, because this hotel is quite a ways from the downtown Washington, D. C. area, old town Alexandria area. We have arranged with the hotel to have shuttles. So tonight and tomorrow night as well, there will be shuttles that will leave on the hour beginning from 6:30 and picking up on, or leaving on the half hour and picking up in the hour in Old Town. So if people want to get together for dinner, also we have a sign up on the bulletin board out here. And busses will, the hotel is providing a shuttle bus. They’ll also provide you a card with the phone number so if you get over there and you wondering when the next bus is coming, or will there be a next bus coming, you can call and we’ll make sure that you get back from Alexandria. So if you’re interested, and that will be up there, and if you decide tonight at the reception, which is our third opportunity today to get together in a more social fashion, if you meet people there and decide to go out to dinner, you can just check up at the front desk and I’m sure that we can accommodate everyone that wants to go. We also, a little bit of housekeeping, have had a few changes in the rooms for the breakout session this afternoon. And I want to give you those. We’ll also have those at the registration table as well. But for both sessions this afternoon, from the 2:00 to the 3:30 session, as well as the 3:45 to 5:00 session, these changes are the breakout in your agenda that was in the Poplar Room, will be in Plaza 1. The Hickory Room, will be in Plaza 2, and the Chestnut Room will be in Plaza 3. And those changes will be the same both for the first breakout session as well as the second. So again, the Poplar Room is Plaza 1, Hickory Room, Plaza 2, Chestnut Room, Plaza 3. And then tomorrow we have one change for the break-out session, and that is the Poplar Room. And we only have one set of break-out sessions tomorrow, which is from 1:45 to 3:15. The Poplar Room has been changed to the Walnut Room. So if you have any questions on that, please check at the Registration Desk and our logistic contractors, who are Rumors, Inc. I know many of you have worked with them over the past several years, and for this meeting getting your arrangements done, are out at the table, so please feel free to check with them on any of the changes or if you have issues with your room, or your flight schedules or whatever. I’m sure they will be happy to help you. Also want to recognize, again this year, we’ll be having most of the sessions video and audio taped and we want to recognize our friends from the University of Chicago, Illinois, who are around the room, who are with us today. After the meeting, these will be archived on our MCHB website, and so we’re going to try to at least audio tape most of the breakout sessions. So if there’s something that you’re just dying to see that you’re not able to because you’re going to be in another session, you will have the opportunity to catch most of these on the archive. So, again, we want to thank our friends from the University of Chicago, Illinois for helping us with this. For a little relaxation, we’re talking about this upfront because it’s going to be some work after this, is that the hotel has very nice jogging and walking paths as part of the compound. And if you want to get out over break, or after the sessions before the reception, you can check with either our table or up at the desk upstairs because we know that sitting all day sometimes is difficult and then people may want to get out and stretch their legs and this facility certainly allows that opportunity. So having said that, I want to take the opportunity to thank you and congratulate you all on this year’s MCH block grant application process. I think that, for the most part, the applications were really excellent. You provided excellent data and really told a very good story in the state and community level. And I know that it was a challenge with the guidance being late coming out, having that approved in May, even though we had a draft out in February that, in fact, there was no change once it got through the O&B clearance. There was still a lot of uncertainty and also with the new web-based submission process. This is an evolutionary process. We know we still have some work to do, particularly on the web-based submission. We encourage you and invite you to provide feedback. Our contractor, SCIC, are here with us. We have resource tables outside, and they will be a resource table. And they’ll also have a round table tomorrow afternoon, so we invite you to come and chat with the folks from SCIC, as well as some of our staff and provide any comments that you have so that we can continue to work with you and improve the process of the block grant applications. But again, I want to commend you on having excellent applications and it really made reviewing them and looking

the data that you provided really a joy in doing that.