MPHI received funding from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in 2013 to house and manage the “Michigan Family-to-Family Health Information Center” (F2F). The center provides information, education, technical assistance, and peer support to families of children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) and the professionals who serve them. To date, MPHI has accomplished the following. To date, MPHI has accomplished the following:
Providing educational opportunities for families of CYSHCN
Providing educational opportunities for professionals to build family-professional partnerships and promote a family-centered, community-based, and culturally competent system of care
Collaborating with state committees and councils to address barriers and participate in opportunities to improve systems of care through the six national 2010 objectives for CYSHCN
Providing technical assistance, information and resources to families and CYSHCN
HRSA recently awarded MPHI a second grant, which extends the project to 2018. For more information visit https://f2fmichigan.org/ .
In 2012, MPHI received its first grant from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs through the Psychological Health Traumatic Brain Injury Research Program to conduct a longitudinal study of “Risk, Resiliency, and Coping in National Guard Families.” This three-year study followed a battalion of soldiers that deployed from the Michigan National Guard, collecting data from the soldiers and their spouses/significant others and parents. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to expand our understanding of stress and adaptation associated with war-time deployments for National Guard families.
MPHI provided project management, study design, online data collection, data management and warehousing, and analysis and dissemination of findings. Project partners included the Michigan National Guard, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, and Ann Arbor Veterans Administration Healthcare.
The project has led to improved understanding of deployment processes for military families. Community partners will use the findings to inform development and adaptation of evidence-based family and community-resilience programs, and to enhance methods that build and sustain strong relationships within military families.
Findings have been presented at the following conferences.
Study team members will continue to analyze data and disseminate results through peer-reviewed journals.
“Michigan Power to Thrive” (MPTT) is a network of eight local health departments and six local affiliates of GAMALIEL of Michigan, all working cooperatively for social justice since 2013. MPTT is part of a larger movement within public health to adopt community-organizing practices in order to advance a health equity framework. The network’s first two years were spent building relationships between the two disciplines and cross-training. Early efforts to mount a multi-county campaign focused on adoption of a “Health in All Policies” decision-making strategy by city and county governments.
MPHI coordinates this network as part of its “Center for Health Equity Practice,” with funding from ISAIAH, Inc., a faith-based organizing group based in Minnesota, and the National Association for City and County Health Officials.
In August 2015, MPTT held an issues convention exploring eight possible issue targets to pursue collectively. The two issues of most interest were mass incarceration/mass deportation and early childhood development. Work teams met again in October and November after engaging in one-to-one interactions with people knowledgeable about the current policy landscape for both issues. The mass incarceration/mass deportation workgroup is focusing on employment supports for formerly incarcerated people and driver cards for undocumented residents. The early childhood development workgroup is focusing on alternatives to expulsion from preschool for 3- and 4-year olds.
To mobilize communities around the issue of early childhood development, local MPTT partners worked together on community screenings of episodes from the documentary series, The Raising of America. These episodes make clear the importance of attending to a child’s development in the first years of life from multiple perspectives, including health, social stability, economics, and recovery from trauma. They also advance a larger narrative to counter what has been called the “school-to-prison” pipeline ̶ the early traumatization and stigmatization of black and brown children, limiting their access to the opportunities and resources needed to achieve well-being.
The principal organizations involved in Michigan Power to Thrive are local health departments in Calhoun, Genesee, Ingham, Kalamazoo, Kent, Saginaw, Washtenaw, and Wayne Counties, and the local faith-based organizing affiliates of GAMALIEL of Michigan: MOSES (Detroit), WeROC (Ypsilanti), ACTION of Greater Lansing, ISAAC (Kalamazoo), The Ezekiel Project (Saginaw), and JONAH (Battle Creek).
National health data reveal that American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) people experience poorer health outcomes and have shorter average life expectancy than the overall U.S. population. Addressing the causes of poor health and early death requires interventions outside of a medical office ‒ preventive services, chronic care management, community-based services ‒ which are inherent to public health. Yet, Native American tribes often face challenges to improving public health, such as social inequities, cross-cultural and jurisdictional barriers, limited access to health care, and lack of parity in financial resources. It is imperative that Tribal health agencies are able to determine how they can improve tribal members’ health through the delivery of essential public health services.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “Public Health Services and Systems Research” grant program funded MPHI to conduct a study to help build an evidence base around how tribes organize and partner to deliver public health services. MPHI conducted an examination of a single tribal public health system, exploring how and through what relationships it delivered public health services, and assessing the key characteristics that addressed health disparities. Data sources included interviews and ecomaps with public health system partners, focus groups with community members, secondary data, and document review. The study followed the principles of tribal community-based participatory research and involved participants in creating and disseminating knowledge.
Findings suggested many future directions for research and practice, including the following.
A full report of the results, a policy brief, and practitioners’ toolkit can be found here: https://www.mphi.org/tribalhealth/ .
Since 2004, the “Region 4 Midwest Genetics Collaborative” (Region 4) has been funded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration to facilitate partnerships to ensure children who are born with rare genetic conditions receive optimal genetic services. Region 4 is housed at and managed by MPHI, which provides fiscal management, strategic direction, project coordination, and facilitation. Partners include genetic experts, health care providers, state newborn screening laboratory and follow-up programs, and families. Stakeholders from seven states ̶ Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin ̶ participate in Region 4.
Work is accomplished by engaging stakeholders in workgroups and/or stakeholder forums, which address the following goals.
An example of Region 4’s work is the “Care Coordination: Empowering Families” training, which provides parents with the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to coordinate their children’s complex health care needs in partnership with a medical home. More than 270 caregivers of children with genetic conditions have been trained; 144 of them were trained through partnerships with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ Children’s Special Health Care Services and the Michigan Family-to-Family Health Information Center (also housed at MPHI). With support from the Genetic Alliance, 40 facilitators have been trained; facilitators are now available in 12 states.
At Region 4’s 2015 Annual Meeting, staff utilized the HRSA-funded Heartland Genetic Services Collaborative’s “Genetic Service Assessment” quality measurement tool to collect data on genetic services in the region. The information will be used in a regional needs assessment to identify strengths and gaps in genetic services. Another component to the needs assessment is the access-to-genetic-service-providers mapping project, which will examine the number of birth defects in the region by county and provide information on the spatial distribution of genetic services providers. Region 4 plans to expand this assessment by using partnerships with state public health programs to obtain newborn screening data. Further measures to be examined include distance-to-care metrics and a genetic condition trend analysis by county.
Region 4 will continue to address the following needs the collaborative identified as priorities for the 2012-2017 grant cycle.
For more information, please visit http://region4genetics.org .