HRSA/MCHB 2005 FEDERAL/STATE PARTNERSHIP MEETING

PUBLIC HEALTH ACROSS THE LIFESPAN

Division of State and Community Health (DSCH)

MICHELE LAWLER: Hi. Good afternoon. I would have to follow Michael, the funny one. And, of course, I’m probably the most boring and least humorous of the division. So anyway, you’ve had your entertainment. Now mine will be a little bit more subdued, shall I say? But I will do my best. It’s my pleasure to welcome you this afternoon to the new leader’s meeting. Cassie Lauver, who you’ve already met, is the division director and I am the deputy as Ann Drum told you.

The Division State and Community Health or DSCH, as we’re so fondly called, provides leadership and administrative oversight for the Title V MCH Services Block Grant, as well as for the States’ Systems Development Initiative, which has its own acronym SSDI.

Can you all hear me? This is -- I’m kinda short here. If you can’t, let me know. The mission of the division state -- the mission, which pretty much follows the mission of the MCH Bureau, is to work in partnership with the states, primarily through the Title V Block Grant, communities and grantees to assure continued improvement in the health, safety and well-being of the MCH population. The Division of State and Community Health serves as the primary liaison to the states, Title V MCH Block Grant, MCH programs. Our staff, the DSCH staff, which I’m going to introduce to you in just a bit, served at the project officers for the 59 state and territory MCH programs. So again, if you remember nothing else this afternoon, you may want to pay attention when I announce your project officer because that’s the person that you will be working with very closely on your Block Grant. The Division of State and Community Health takes the lead in preparing the application guidance for the Title V MCH Block Grant program, as well as coordinates the face-to-face reviews that you have each year regarding your Block Grant application and your annual report. While our project officers track the states’ programs and performance data and are really looking at the progress that the states are making in meeting their performance objectives. How many of you this past year had the opportunity to go through your Block Grant review? I think that’s most of you. I’d like everyone else to see a big, bright light, but in addition, we coordinate the technical assistance requests of the states and the jurisdictions. We also, as I said, administrate the SSDI program. And we plan the annual federal/state partnership meeting, which is a required meeting for the Title V MCH Children with Special Health Care needs directors. In addition, this year for the very first time, the SSDI coordinators are also attending this meeting. How many of you are SSDI coordinators? Quite a few. Welcome..

The Title V grantees submit their applications for annual reports on line using the Title V information system, and actually, Dr. van Dyck talked quite a bit about this. But this system was developed to help capture the data and all the program information that states were providing their applications in their annual reports. The annual data as states reported is available for five years. It’s accessible to the general public as well as to states, colleagues. It’s available online. It’s a web-based tool. And it does allow for state, regional and national comparisons. States report on the 18 national performance measures, their state performance measures, their outcome measures, their health system capacity indicators. In addition, every five years states are required to conduct a statewide needs assessment, which this past year we lovingly refer to it as the year of the needs assessment. So those of you that did participate in the Block Grant reviews also participated I’m sure in the review of your five-year needs assessment. This needs assessment does help to really lay the groundwork for states in trying to identify their priority needs and to develop their state base performance measures.

Also, I should say -- well, let’s go on the next, but I talked about, you know, all the state -- you keep hearing us talk about all the data that you collect and all the program information that you provide. This information really is helpful in informing the work of the Division of State and Community Health in helping to identify and to shape our priority areas. As we’ve talked about analyzing Title V performance data across states and with individual states over time, that’s a very big role that the Division of State and Community Health plays. I would like to draw you to -- I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the snapshot, which previously has been released in a hard copy. And it’s intended to show a snapshot of the states’ data, you know, selective state performance measures, national performance measures, outcome measures, financial data, services, the level of impairment, and it intends to capture this data for each state. This year, in 2005, we actually released an online version, and I would encourage you to go into the website, which by the way, is accessible if you go into the MCHB website, which is www.mchb.hrsa.gov. And when you get there, click on “data.” It will take you right a link for the Title V information system, so I would encourage you to use this tool. It’s a wonderful tool. You can go into it, it has nice graphics and it really allows for you to look at your state, but not only look at your state, but to compare your state to other states in the region or perhaps other states outside of your region of maybe of comparable size.

Also, a priority within the Division of State and Community Health is to identify possible best practice models. We really spend a lot of time trying to look at areas that some states are doing very well in, areas that maybe other states aren’t doing as well in. We know that states really do like to learn from each other. And sometimes states are really better tools for each other than the information that we can necessarily provide, so we try to facilitate that sharing of information across states. And sometimes even it helps states realize what they’re doing quite well in, when sometimes they haven’t picked up on it. And in addition, we coordinate technical assistance to individual states, but not only to the individual states, but with the other divisions and offices in the MCH and HRSA.

Now, I have here the project officers for each of the regions. Before I go to that, I would like to mention that, as I said, we are the Office of the Division that prepares the MCH Title V Block /grant application guidance. That is done every three years. We have to update it and submit it to the Office of Management and Budget for review and clearance. And yes, we are in that time. A work group was formed earlier in the year which included state Title V directors, state MCH epidemiologists and public health scholars, academia, you know, a very wide group that we solicited input from this, trying to look at the Block Grant guidance. Look at the Block Grant guidance to try to see what revisions if any that needed to be made. The proposed revisions were released in Federal Register Notice on September the 29th will be out for of 60 days, which we did share with the states. But also, I wanted to let you know that as of last Friday, we have put the proposed revisions document on our website, which again is www.mchb.hrsa.gov. You go to that section, you look under “of interest,” click on that and you can see specifically the changes that we are proposing to make, changes that are fairly minimal.

We’re actually looking at introducing two new performance measures, replacing two existing performance measures and it’s also a health systems capacity indicator measure that we’re proposing to delete, and we proposed revisions to three existing national performance measures, as well as try to enhance some of the directions regarding the health systems capacity indicators. So I would encourage you, I know there’s a lot of interest out there in what group issues that we’re planning to make. So I would encourage you all to go into the site and to really look over that. You have a 60-day comment period. Comments will be given over at the 29 th. But let me take this opportunity to introduce to you the DSCH staff and who your project officers are. For Region 1 and Region 7, Elizabeth Walkup, who is now, as of two weeks ago, now Elizabeth McGuire. And Elizabeth is here in the front. Elizabeth did get married two weeks ago. So for those of you that don’t know that and you happen to see her, you might want to offer your congratulations. We were sort of excited to have a wedding around the division for a change. We kind of haven’t had too many of those lately.

Region 2 and Region 5 is Pamela Eason. And Pam is not here today due to a family situation, but she will be here tomorrow and she will be participating. I would draw your attention to the afternoon regional breakouts and the DSCH project officers will be attending those breakouts with you all.

Region 3 is Carol O’Toole. Carol, could you stand up, please? Carol also works with the TA so those of you that have submitted requests for TA; many of you have dealt with Carol. And Carol takes a very active role in planning this meeting so thanks to Carol for that.

We have had a couple of changes in the Division of State and Community Health from the last time we’ve met. And Captain Mary Beth Reed retired. But, you know, we were sad to lose her, but I have to say, all the correspondence I’ve had from Mary Beth, she’s loving it. So she seems like she made a very good move for herself. Captain Audrey Cartwright I see is here in the front was also formally in DSCH and is now moved to Ann Drum’s division, Division of Research, Training and Education. So we wish her well. We’re sorry to lose her in DSCH, but we do have a couple of new project officers. Scott Snyder, who’s joined us, who originally started in our division, then went to Bonny Strickland’s branch in Children with Special Health Care Needs, and now is back with us. Scott, could you stand up? Scott is going to be the project officer for Region 4.

Region 6 and Region 10 is Sharon Adamo. And Sharon, could you stand up? I think she’s right next to Scott. Sharon also joins us from David Heppel’s division, which is the Division of Children and Adolescent and Family Health. And yes, we went down the halls and we solicited people to try to come to our division so we too are very happy to have Sharon join us. And she is going to be serving as the project officer in Region 6 and 10. As I said, Elizabeth McGuire will be in Region 7. I’m actually the project director, project officer for Region 8. Region 9, which was formally Cassie Lauver. Cassie is going to continue to work with the Pacific basin jurisdictions and with Hawaii. And then Corey Palmer, another new project officer, and I don’t know, Corey, are you here? I’m not sure if he’s here or not. But anyway, Corey Palmer will be a new project officer to will be in Region 9 also. And as I said, Sharon is in Region 10.

And here you can see our nice little pyramid. I think it says something, when you notice the number of folks on the telephone, we do spend a large amount of time on the phone with our state directors. I’m the one with the messy desk, unfortunately, but I’d like to introduce Joe Leach, who is SSDI coordinator. Joe, would you like to stand up? And Joe has actually works with all the 59 states and jurisdictions in their SSDI program. And there is a meeting, I believe, tomorrow afternoon, for SSDI coordinators. And lastly, Florence O’Doncarra is our support staff in this. She is not here today, but many of you I know have received emails regarding Katrina and different program-related matters, and you will see Florence ’s name. So if you have the chance to talk to her, you will have some idea of who you’re talking with. Anyway, it’s my pleasure. I’m happy to answer questions at the end. Welcome, and we look forward to working with you. Thanks so much.