National Maternal and Child Health Workforce Development Center Hosts Health Reform Skill Building Workshop
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- Last Updated on Tuesday, 02 September 2014 16:46
The National Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Workforce Development Center hosted its first face-to-face workshop for eight participating states on June 17-18th in Chapel Hill, NC. The purpose of the workshop was to provide continued workforce development for state Title V MCH program leaders and staff members in four key programmatic areas around implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) - access to care, quality improvement (QI), systems integration and population health management. The workshop focused on the following key objectives:
• Building a collaborative learning environment
• Teaching and engaging state teams in health transformation
• Incorporating systems integration tools to achieve project goals
• Establishing peer-to-peer “action learning sets” that foster personal leadership skills and cross-state learning
• Applying quality improvement methods and tools to achieve state health transformation project goals
• Developing a measurement plan to evaluate the impact of the projects
Each of the eight state teams in the Workforce Development Center’s first cohort (Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi and Rhode Island) brought 5-6 staff to participate in the two-day workshop. During the workshop, participants continued to learn more in- depth methods and tools in each of the four key programmatic areas, as well as develop measurable plans to apply the tools to their project. The skills and tools taught at the workshop were intended to focus on the team’s current projects, but also to transfer to future initiatives. It was essential to begin generating a rich toolbox from which participants could pull out tools as they need them to respond effectively and lead in the environment of health transformation.
“The Intensive Workshop allowed for quality time to specifically focus on our state’s status and where we need to go in health care reform,” said a participant.
The state teams were eager to learn valuable and applicable strategies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their services in effort to improve the health and well-being of women, children, and families. State teams were provided a lot of "team time" to work with their Workforce Development Center coaches and faculty to answer questions, get hand-on application of the tools and share lessons learned with other states.
“The level of energy and engagement of the state teams has been outstanding,” said Dorothy Cilenti, Principal Investigator and Director, National MCH Workforce Development Center, UNC Gillings School of Public Health. “Their drive to advance health reform transformation is evident in all their hard work throughout this initiative.”
Following the workshop, state teams will participate in the action period phase consisting of four webinars, as well as continued coaching and assistance. Also during this phase, each state assigned coach will conduct site visits to further assist the team on their project’s progress. Additional Center faculty in various areas of expertise will join the Center coaches during the site visits based on the need of the state teams.
To learn more about the National MCH Workforce Development Center, click here.
