HRSA/MCHB 2005 FEDERAL/STATE PARTNERSHIP MEETING

PUBLIC HEALTH ACROSS THE LIFESPAN

Town Hall Meeting

PETER VAN DYCK: Thanks, John. I asked for a chance to just say a minute's worth and tell you, share with you how impressed I was over the last six weeks of the response that not only our staff but particularly you in the states and you in Healthy Start sites and you in some of you of the other sites provided for us.

Certainly the effects of the states in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, what became known as the ring states, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma. And I know there's a second level or a third tier, perhaps, of other ring states around the United States who accepted evacuees and provided important services.

HRSA had to report on its clinical service programs. And in HRSA, that included HIV/AIDS, community health centers, the MCH Block Grant and the clinical content of that perhaps was a surprise to some. Healthy Start programs and hemophilia centers.

So we in Maternal and Child Health Bureau had a significant piece of the reports that had to go to the Secretary at least daily and sometimes, at the beginning, twice a day. And I was so proud and impressed by our staff, Maribeth Badura and her staff, and Cassie and her staff, and you, who provided great information, bore the brunt of our daily or twice‑daily calls, which I know bothered many of you being bugged that often when you didn't have anything new to say and when we had to track you down and find you. But we provided probably the best information early on of all those clinical programs or those few clinical programs that I mentioned.

And we did amass really a wonderful periodically updating document or report, which we sent to you once a week on Friday. And I guess what we hoped in this session was: Can we learn from this? Can we learn for the future? And we've heard a lot from you in calls and the staff have heard a lot from you of, can we in some way turn this into a learning experience? Can we use the experiences that we just went through? Do you have documents? Can we use our documents? So really the hope this morning was to take a few minutes and just share some ideas in that vein. And, again, I just want to tell you how proud and responsive you folks were and how important that is to this current administration.

Thank you very much. You deserve a hand.

So, Cassie, I think you're going to draw these folks out here.