General Council Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Location: / Mid-Region Council of Governments / Time: / 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
Voting Members Present: BJ Ciesielski, Lora Church, Jeanne Forrester, Sherri Gonzales, Michelle Melendez, Michelle Skrupskis
Non-Voting Participants: Judy Baca, Eric Chrisp, Claire Dudley, Carlos Flores, Lia Geever, Andrew Gingerich, Chris Hollis, Lorna Marchand, Daniel Michel, Jerry Montoya, Danielle Reed, Misty Salaz, Andrea Serrano, Angelica Solares , Kristine Suozzi Staff: Enrique Cardiel, Marsha McMurray-Avila, Tracy McDaniel
Agenda Items / Discussion / Action /
1. / Welcome and intros / All present introduced themselves.
2. / Updates on BCCHC activities – questions on Staff Report / Marsha provided an update of health council activities, discussing the written staff report distributed to attendees (and posted at www.berncohealthcouncil.org) .
At last night’s commission meeting, three new voting members were approved by the County Commissioners. Sherri Gonzales, Jeanne Forrester, and Leigh Caswell are our newest voting members.
Kellogg has provided funding for the Health Equity Partnership HEP), an initiative based in the Santa Fe Community Foundation (SFCF). The Health Equity Partnership is a collective impact initiative consisting of three main components: Health Impact Assessments (HIA), expansion of Place Matters Teams, and the New Mexico Alliance of Health Councils statewide. One coordinator position for each of these three components will be posted soon on the SFCF website. The overall HEP Manager position has already been posted. The coordinators will all be working out of the SFCF offices in Santa Fe. Please pass this information along to anyone who would be interested in these positions.
The first planning meeting for the upcoming Opiate Summit will take place next week. Albuquerque Journal is currently running a series on licit and illicit opiate use, which parlays nicely with this summit.
NMAHC met recently with Secretary of Health Torres. Three people from the Executive Committee attended. DOH is currently seeking accreditation, and may be looking to Community Health Councils to conduct local assessment and evaluation, which could provide the basis for re-establishing funding from DOH. The Secretary is supportive of the HC’s. A follow-up meeting is planned with Tres Schnell, who is in charge of the accreditation process.
Minutes for the monthly HC meetings are available on the BCCHC website. Question: Do people want a hard copy to be distributed during meetings? Response: No, but send a link via email along with the meeting reminder. However, it would be useful to have 5 copies available at meetings for individuals who are new to the Health Council. / Go to www.santafecf.org/ for more information about the employment opportunities. Pass this information along to interested individuals.
3. / Presentation & Discussion on Communicating Public Health by Enrique Cardiel, Urban Health Extension / The County Community Health Team and CINCH have been working to align their health communications plan, and we would like to also align the Health Council’s communications plan wit h other parts of the community health team. One way to do that is by utilizing the Community Health Profile as a communications tool.
Public Health in Bernalillo County is under-funded and under-supported. In Canada, there are 250 public health workers for a population of 200,000 people. In Bernalillo County, we have only 10 people specifically devoted to public health (on the Community Health Team: Marsha & Tracy; Enrique; 5 CINCH staff; 3 Office of Environmental Health staff). What can we do that would make a significant impact on Public Health? We won’t get greater material support unless decision-makers and community members feel that public health is important. Media sets the frame of what we think about and how we think about it. Creating a communications plan is one key element in establishing greater public support for PH.
Enrique distributed the “Promoting Community Health in Bernalillo County” communications plan for review. The current goal is to promote a deeper understanding of health equity and community health. We hope to accomplish this by developing a communications strategy that ensures we are all saying the same thing in the same way to similar audiences, and using appropriate messaging when addressing different audiences. We will be pulling together different pieces from different parts of the team, mostly without a budget.
Chris Hollis (from NM Voices for Children) has a background in Health Communications and has volunteered to provide support and expertise in this endeavor. Non-county affiliated agencies can help carry the health equity message without restrictions. Part of the development of the communications plan will be identifying key partner organizations and their potential contributions as well as identifying who in the community is already doing parts of this work.
Enrique asked attendees to complete two questionnaires regarding public health and community health in BernCo. The responses will help inform the communications plan moving forward. / Enrique and Tracy will transcribe the responses to the questionnaires completed today and use those responses to inform the Community Health Team Communications Plan.
4. / Using the County Health Profile as a communications tool / The Community Health Profile, which we are beginning to update, will be used as part of this messaging. It will be used as a tool to educate different audiences about health equity. Does anyone object to aligning the communications plan with the Health Profile and the Health Council? – Consensus, no objections.
A few years ago, the HC did posters and billboards in specific neighborhoods, which was very effective. Community members know that things are bad, but we can give them something to hold on to and actions to take. An infographic from the Profile would be a great way to get the message out to the communities. We should work to maintain the positive frame, focusing on the question: “What do healthy communities look like?” The California Endowment has a very effective campaign, “Health Happens Here,” which could be used as a model.
Marsha presented her plan for the new profile, which will be a web-based communications tool, set in three layers with increasingly detailed information. The first layer, will be the initial message, with the target audience being the general public. It will be arranged by the HC priority result areas and will include pictures, stories, and video. These stories will focus on solutions, rather than problems. The problems will be addressed, but solutions will be featured.
The second layer will outline the headline indicators to be tracked. We could continually track these to produce report cards for each indicator. There will be links to data and other resources (local resources, reports, national and international data and resources). This layer will also include links to the third layer.
The third layer will be highly detailed and more like what we now have available online, but it will be broken into sections instead of being one large, unwieldy document. This layer will be used by grant writers, students, folks writing reports, etc.
We will begin creating the headline indicators and working through the RBA process during our monthly meetings. How will we begin this work? Each month, we will have a topic area, and identify strategies, recommendations, and resources for that topic. We will need to have some way between monthly meetings to develop headline indicators. Council members need to come prepared for each work session and ensure that subject matter experts are encouraged to attend meetings pertinent to their subject area. Prior to meetings, we will distribute the indicators list, so that members can bring subject matter experts to the working group. It would be helpful to create a framework with a timeline, so we know what’s coming up in the coming months. This will help the group to build new norms for the meetings. Even though we have decided not to have standing subcommittees, maybe subject matter experts could sign up for one month of work to help establish indicators for their topic area. We could utilize the RBA process, breaking up into 3 smaller groups, and work through 3 different indicators in each meeting.
Essentially, during this process, we will be accomplishing three different tasks. We will be updating the profile, utilizing RBA turn-the-curve methodology for planning, and developing an interactive website. These things will occur simultaneously, with each of these components informing and being informed by the others. / Marsha will create a framework with a timeline to guide the work to take place over the next few monthly meetings.
5. / Community Updates and Announcements / There is an issue with the standing time and day of the monthly HC meeting. There is a UNM class that conflicts with the meeting, and four key members of the Health Council are instructors for that class. We will be sending out a Doodle to establish a new meeting time.
Jeanne Forrester announced that Dr. Kristine Muerer is the new Executive Director of Student, Family and Community Supports. She has decided to combine Health and Wellness with School and Community Partnerships.
Daniel Michel, Community Engagement Specialist with Place Matters, announced that the HIA focusing on 2nd Street through Mountainview has been summarized on the Place Matters website. (www.bcplacematters.com/2nd-street-hia) This website has been receiving lots of attention and is being replicated by other Place Matters teams around the country.
Sherri Gonzales announced that her contract with Casa de Salud has come to an end, and she will no longer be providing medical debt training after the end of the month.
CINCH policy training has been planned for September 7. This training is the third of the Training Academy geared toward members of the CINCH Leadership Team and other advisory teams as we build capacity. Next year, we will open the training up to community partners and other stakeholders. / A Doodle request will be sent to the Google group to establish a new date and time for the monthly meetings.
6. / Adjourn / Next BCCHC meeting will be September 19th from 11:30 am -1:30 pm at MR-COG (unless new date/ time is found)

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