MCHB 2006 Federal/State Partnership Meeting
MCH Leaders and Their Legacies: A Web-Based Tool
October 15-18, 2006
LAURA KAVANAGH: Okay. I think this is the group we're going to have at eight o' clock in the morning. Thank you all very, very much for coming on a drizzly Tuesday morning, and I think we've passed--it was today the day that we were going to--the census said we were going to pass the 300 million?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We did.
LAURA KAVANAGH: So we did.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: In California.
LAURA KAVANAGH: Congratulations. I don't know what we had to do with it. Okay. As I mentioned before, I'm Laura Kavanagh and I'm chief of the training branch at the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. And it's a pleasure to be with you here today to unveil a website called MCH Timeline: History, Legacy and Resources for Education and Practice.
We went around this morning and put fliers on your tables. I do have a few extra around as well, but that has the URL for future reference for you. I hope you'll be excited enough about the resource at the end of our presentation that you'll want to save that and bookmark it on your computer.
My interest in maternal and child health history started many years ago with my interactions with two mentors. The first was Mary Egan who I worked with around the primary care project years and years ago. She used to be the deputy at the Maternal and Child Health Bureau and spawned an early interest in maternal and child health. And the second mentor that I was fortunate enough to have, who really sparked my interest in maternal and child health was Dr. Vince Hutchins. I had the pleasure working with him at Georgetown University's National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health. And we actually taught a course together called Current Issues in Maternal and Child Health Policy. And we taught history to public policy students instead of public health students.
I participated in many rich discussions with Vince and with students about the importance of history, what we can learn from history, but also some quirky discussions about how did maternal and child health get to be the way it is today. Some things don't make sense, but if you look at them in a historical perspective, it helps to see how the events come together. I hope that this website spawns a lot of conversations with you and with others around the country, around maternal and child health history and how we can integrate history into our everyday lives.
We thought we would start the presentation today with a brief slideshow, to help wake you up at eight o' clock on a dreary morning, that's going to highlight some of the MCH leaders and events. Most of the images that you see on this slideshow appear on the website as well. So we're trying to make the connection between the two. You will also--there are a few slides on this slideshow that Kay Johnson--is Kay here--developed for a City-Match meeting several years ago. And I've cited those on there. Her full presentation will be available on the website in the near future as well.
Could we go ahead and begin the slideshow please?
I can tell your generation.
(Slide Show)
That's it. Sorry about that abrupt end.
It has been an absolute joy to work on this project. I hope you enjoyed the slideshow. We began work on this project about six months ago. The idea came from Mary Beth Badura who wanted to develop a web-based module on maternal and child health history for Healthy Start grantees, who might not have been trained in maternal and child health and weren't aware of their rich history. After several conversations with Mary Beth, I expressed a strong interest in working on the project and asked if we could expand the focus of the project beyond just the Healthy Start grantees, and she agreed, and I began to work with my coconspirators here on developing an MCH history website.
Holly Grason and Jack Neuner are here with me today, but I wanted to also acknowledge some other folks who worked on this project, who weren't able to join us today. This is Greg Alexander and his faculty photo and his casual photo. He said I could choose and I couldn't choose so I put them both up. And I'll talk a little bit more--I can share some comments with you this morning that Greg sent to us.
The next--oh, I can actually do next--is Colleen Huebner at the school--oh, I'm sorry. Let me go back. Greg is head of the Leadership Institute, which for years has included MCH history as part of the curriculum there and also with the School of Public Health at the University of South Florida. Colleen Huebner is with the University of Washington School of Public Health. She also participated in the planning committee for this website and wrote the MCH 101 In-depth Module. You'll hear about the different aspects of this website as we go through the presentation.
Also, I want to publicly recognize the work of three graduate students who wrote a lot of the copy for each of what we're calling Pinpoint. You'll see that on the website in just one moment. Alice Richmond is currently a PhD student at the University of South Florida; Sun Hee Rim has an MPH; and Bonnie Means Lane is currently an MPH student at the University of South Florida.
Because Greg couldn't be here today--I did ask him to share his thoughts about his work on this project, so that you could hear about his experience in working around MCH history. So these are comments from Greg Alexander. "Last week, Laura asked me to put down some thoughts and experiences related to the development of the MCH milestones. That very evening, my youngest daughter asked me to help her with a homework question. She explained that she wasn't sure if she understood the following question: how does history influence culture? I was struck by her simple and, for me, very timely request. I smiled, thanked her, and gave her a hug. She just gave me a thought about how to respond to both her and Laura.
"Underlying my daughter's question is the premise that history does have an impact on culture and probably does in several ways. Certainly, historical events have influenced the culture and activities of MCH. As a student some years ago, I wondered how MCH got to be the way it is. In some ways, it's so impressive. It's progressive, innovative and, frankly, brilliant in some of its concepts. However, in other ways, MCH seems overly convoluted, bumbling and backward. How did it get like this? Was there a plan for this and did we make it up as we went? The answers are there in our past waiting to inform and guide us if we seek them out.
"When I became the director of the MCH Leadership Skills Training Institute nearly 15 years ago, I inherited a three-ring binder--" Do any of you remember the three-ring binder? Just a few. "--that contained the MCH history and philosophy manual. It contained a timeline of the history of MCH, some quotes about what MCH is about, and a collection of slides of historic photos. Vince Hutchins and Allen O'Bosby had guided the development of the manual years before and sent a copy to every State MCH Office.
"The institute was getting more and more employees from states, a byproduct of their ongoing reorganizations. And I felt this tone needed to be updated and redistributed. As a first step, I checked to see if this manual was still being used or was it lost and buried on bookcases. I asked folks that attended the institute if they had ever seen the thing. The response was always, 'No.'
"Updating the manual began to feel like a waste of time. Nevertheless, these new MCH professionals were clearly eager to understand about MCH and would ask the familiar question: why do we do the things the way we do them? I found similar questions being asked by our MCH graduate students. It was obvious they needed to infuse both MCH graduate and CE education with some MCH history. However, that three-ring binder just didn't look up to the job. Fortunately, solutions are often everywhere when your eyes open to see them and there was Ken Burns on PBS releasing this compelling TV series about the Civil War, which used these wonderful old pictures. So with the support of MCHB, their collection of MCH historical pictures was expanded, reorganized into a PowerPoint presentation with accompanying texts, and placed online. This product was cumbersome to use and slow to download. So I knew we were on the right track, but the day I saw and heard some students staring at the pictures, that these were PowerPoint presentations and the text, I noticed that they seemed to be lost in thought as they went through the photos or slides rather. They appeared to be imagining how things once were and dreaming about how things might be once they joined the field as MCH professionals.
"Our classroom discussions about MCH started to take on new life with more reflective responses and insightful questions. Our history was becoming fused to the present and the bright spots and imperfections of our field were being placed in a context. As I look upon this new interactive MCH timeline to be revealed today, I'm even more convinced of the value of this investment by MCHB and see it as the logical next step in building the MCH professional workforce.
"Just to finish my initial story, I answered my daughter by asking her questions. Hardly surprising; I am a professor. If culture entails what we believe, value, and aspire to, have social events like epidemics and economic depression influence our culture? Has war? Have individuals who step forward to become leaders and heroes had an impact on our culture? We talked about the good and the bad that may come from these events and how, by understanding our history, we can learn about who we are and how we might make things better.
"As I write this, I realized I should have stressed one more thing to my daughter: that culture influences future history. In MCH, I firmly believe our culture of leadership and professionalism, of inclusion and compassion provides the cornerstone upon which the future will now be built. This culture reflects our past and so it is fitting that the MCH timeline is now a part of our field's proud legacy.
"This timeline is a chronicle about us all and is something to which we can all contribute. Let us make sure that it doesn't turn into another three-ring binder that sits on a shelf. Let one of our contributions to our field be a dynamic and evolving resource for the education of future generations of MCH professionals."
That's from Greg.
My staff has been very patient with me as I've been working on this project for the last several months, and I think they sometimes wonder why we were investing so much time and energy into history when resources are so short. Like Greg, we at the bureau firmly believe that the wisdom from the past will help us make more informed decisions today and tomorrow. We can't fully appreciate where we are today without studying where we've been. And studying MCH history provides us with a common frame of reference, even some common language, a shared identity and a source of inspiration, I hope.
Many of the priorities and approaches that we take as given today are based on the foresight of some quite insightful and forward-thinking early architects of the Children's Bureau. Those who crafted the authorizing legislation for the bureau in 1912 wrote a deliberately broad charter for the agency: to investigate and report on all matters pertaining to children. While the Maternal and Child Health Bureau's broad mandate can at times be a source of frustration, given limited resources, as Dr. Klein Walker mentioned yesterday, it also provides a comprehensive framework within which we can address the complex issues impacting the health and well-being of the nation's mothers, children, and families.
MCH has a long and distinguished history about which many of who are practicing in the field aren't aware with turnover is--I'm not sharing anything new with you with turnover in your agencies. We've certainly had turnover within the bureau. It's important that we always share this history with new folks coming in.
Okay. Jack is going to provide an overview of the site but let me give you just a brief, brief overview. Again, the name of the website is MCH Timeline: History, Legacy and Resources for Education and Practice. I hope you all have a handout in front of you. The URL is
Now, Jack is going to provide a much more detailed overview of the website. I want to recognize Jack publicly. He's on the credits page on the website. But we had a lot of vague ideas about what we wanted in a timeline. It was going to be sort of like a Life Magazine, sort of like a Time Magazine, and, oh, yeah, if it could look as flashy as nice Ken Burn's documentary, that would be great, and, oh, yes, we do have very limited resources. This was a labor of love, trust me. We didn't compensate anybody who worked on the project with what they've invested in this project. It was Jack's vision and skills that turned our vague notion of what we wanted in terms of a timeline, into what you're going to see presented today. So, here's Jack Neuner.