MCHB 2006 Federal/State Partnership Meeting

Closing Summary

October 15-18, 2006

CASSIE LAUVER:  Thanks, John and thank all of you.  I think it's been a really good meeting.  I've had a lot of positive feedback and one of the things that is resounding, not only when we started planning this meeting, was I certainly didn't know that we were going to stumble upon the confluence of opportunities that we may have in the upcoming year and years as it relates to leadership and what the vision is going to be.  We do have such a wonderful opportunity with, first, you all in the field that are actually making a difference where the rubber meets the road and working in partnership with you from the federal level, working with AMCHP and the, I think, unique opportunity of having people that are so knowledgeable in MCH coming to the academy as well as APHA.  And as Doctor Jenkins said this morning, that it's really part of our responsibility to step up and be proactive and not reactive.  And it's critical that we do that with some of the challenges that we are facing out there.  And as Debbie said in her very energetic opening session, which I appreciated very much, if not now, when?  If not us, who?  And I think we really need to take that with us and put that into practice and also look at the leadership and I really like the discussion and I've had discussion throughout the meeting and today with individuals because we began the meeting in looking at some of our historic past and all of the great mentors and individuals that were leaders in the field and that have mentored many of us and that there are a lot of new people.  We had new leader's orientation on Sunday and I think a third or half the room were new within the year.  And we constantly are updating our list serve and we know that the leadership in the states are continuing to change and constantly changing.  And the last discussion that we had and this opportunity to have this kind of interchange as part of the meeting really is helping us look at what are our roles are as leaders to develop training and embrace the new leadership, the up and coming leadership, in the field out there.  And so I think we'll be looking at opportunities for that as well. 

So I want to thank the planning committee that worked very hard throughout the year.  You have in your notebooks who that is so I won't go through all of the names, but it did represent everyone in our division of state and community health as well as representation from all of the divisions and offices in the bureau, state directors, individuals from AMCHP and Family Voices that participated in the planning for this meeting.  I want to thank Rumors Inc., who are our contractors for the logistics part of the meeting.  As always, the University of Illinois at Chicago, who have video recorded most of these sessions and we will have this available to you on video archive on our MCHcom.com website in a very few weeks and encourage you to share with your staff who weren't able to come the sessions and particularly, I think, some of the keynote presentations that will help to energize some of the new folks that are in your programs there.  The Future Search team that came and shared their tool as a potential tool into all of you who have been here right to the very end, I really appreciate it and thank you and have a safe trip home.