We are pleased to announce the release of the Call for Applications for community teams to participate in Phase Two of the Healthy Weight Collaborative, a national quality improvement effort to test and spread evidence-based and promising interventions to prevent and treat obesity. Attached, please find a fact sheet with more information on the Collaborative and the broader Collaborate for Healthy Weight initiative.

The Call for Applications may be found at: http://www.collaborateforhealthyweight.org/Take-Action/Join-the-Collaborative.aspx. Please access the PDF version of the complete application, or click on the blue “Apply Now!” box for access to the online application.

This phase will bring together 40 multi-sector teams (including primary care, public health, and the community) from across the country to engage in a virtual learning community from late February 2012-February 2013.

Key Dates:
• Application deadline: January 27, 2012 at 3:00 pm EST.
• Informational webinar for interested applicants: January 11, 2012 from 3:00-4:00 pm EST. Registration is required to attend, and may be accessed at http://www.cvent.com/d/dcq8qx. Space is limited.
• Accepted teams notified: February 28, 2012.

Phase Two Recruitment Priorities:
• Broad geographic distribution, with representation from urban, rural, tribal, and underserved communities facing significant health disparities.
• Tribal communities, as well as teams with a focus on faith-based, intergenerational, and women’s health approaches are encouraged to apply.
• The application of community health workers (ie. patient navigators, promatoras, or community advocates) and mHealth or innovative technology (ie. text messages, smart phone applications, or other innovative approaches) is encouraged.
• IT capacity (or access to) to participate in the virtual collaborative, including webinars and videoconferencing

For more information about the Healthy Weight Collaborative and the Collaborate for Healthy Weight initiative, please visit the project’s website: www.collaborateforhealthyweight.org.

If you have any further questions, please email info@collaborateforhealthyweight.org or contact Becca Lipman at 617-391-2700.

Thank you for your partnership in this exciting effort,

Sarah

Sarah R. Linde-Feucht, M.D.
CAPT U.S. Public Health Service
Chief Public Health Officer
Health Resources and Services Administration
5600 Fishers Lane, Room 14-05, Rockville, MD 20857
Phone: 301-443-3325 Blackberry: 202-425-1587
Email: slinde-feucht@hrsa.gov

Hello everyone,

We want to announce that we are re-establishing our time line for funded projects. Because of our new contract we are advancing the solicitation of funded projects. The time line is being changed so that project performance periods will coincide with our own fiscal year. The plan is to have funded projects being May 2012. In order to do that we are announcing the RFPs now.

As in the previous years our funded projects fall into

1. Express Outreach Awards
2. Health Information Outreach Subcontracts
3. Knowledge Management Pilot Sites Funding.

The full solicitations are available on our funding page. This year we are asking proposal submitters to notify NER of your intent to submit a proposal. This helps give us an idea of the proposals to expect and we can notify the COIs and organize the appropriate reviewing teams.

Express Outreach is the broad category of awards for projects involving community outreach, professional development, and instructional design. Funding amounts are generally under $8,000.

• Multiple projects throughout the region will be funded.
• Proposals are due January 20, 2012.
• Approved projects will be contacted on or before March 1, 2012.
• Funded projects can begin their performance period May 1, 2012. Performance period should not exceed 12 months.

Health Information Outreach Subcontracts assist Network members and other health-related agencies in providing information services and training to audiences not normally reached.

• $25,000 is available to fund one or more projects
• Proposals are due January 20, 2012.
• Approved projects will be contacted on or before February 24, 2012.
• Funded projects can begin their performance period May 1, 2012. Performance Period should not exceed 12 months.

Knowledge Management funding stimulates innovations in biomedical knowledge management and information services at the health care institution or health system level. Pilot sites will develop Knowledge Management practices tailored to their institutional needs. Please note the link to the Field Guide developed as a resource for KM implementation.

• $12,500 is available to fund one or more projects
• Proposals are due January 20, 2012.
• Approved projects will be contacted on or before February 24, 2012.
• Funded projects can begin their performance period May 1, 2012. Performance Period should not exceed 12 months.

This note was previously posted on our Funding Opportunities mailing list. Contact the NER with questions or your intent to submit a proposal.

The National Library of Medicine provides a People Finder to help locate your loved ones after a disaster. You can now add people and search for people affected by the Typhoon Sendong. You can also report and search for people surviving the Turkey earthquake and the Japan earthquake and tsunami.

From the NLM People Finder About Us:
All data contained on this Web site are available to the public and are searchable by all visitors to the Web site. Data are received from multiple sources: direct submissions to NLM using the “ReUnite” application or email, from the Google Person Finder, and from other organizations, as indicated on individual records. The site may not be moderated, and NLM and other contributing organizations do not review or verify the accuracy of any of the data presented on this Web site. Note that data received by direct submission to NLM may be disseminated to other agencies, institutions, and organizations assisting the effort to locate missing people,including the Google Person Finder.

Ways You Can Search:
Once you have performed a search, you may also limit your results by status, gender, and age. Status choices are missing (blue), alive and well (green), injured (red), deceased (black), found (brown) or unknown (gray). Gender choices are male, female, and other/unknown.
Age choices are 0-17, 18+, or unknown.

Please spread the word about the NLM People Finder, to help family and friends find eachother in times of natural disasters.

The Importance of Community Assessment in
Community Health Outreach

Before you can plan and implement a successful community outreach event, you must understand your community, which includes knowing its assets as well as its needs. The Healthy People 2020 initiative provides a community assessment guide at its website called MAP-IT http://healthypeople.gov/2020/implementing/default.aspx?source=govdelivery
Here you can find a tool to guide you in data collection you can use to determine your community’s assets, needs, and priorities. The assessment tool looks at a community’s physical environment, access to health services, social environment, genetics, and individual health behaviors.

Ken Morse, director of my local community health coalition, Healthy Oxford Hills, has this to say about community assessment and partnership:

“Healthy Oxford Hills, along with all the other Healthy Maine Partnerships, work on health planning processes and community outreach. A key piece of this is dwelling as much or more on community assets as on community needs. This work is sometimes called “strength-based” or “asset-based community development.” The idea is to engage people and resources from as many diverse sectors or components of the community as possible. We sometimes describe this as “knitting together” different community threads. Every person and every group has something unique to offer the community.

It’s really interesting and encouraging how successful collaborations sometimes spring from bringing diverse folks together. For example, to address physical fitness, we worked on building and promoting local walking trails. We identified a brook running through our downtown as a key water trail. It needed some serious cleaning up, so our trails committee was able to enlist the local Trout Unlimited chapter to help out with this.

In times of limited budgets, getting diverse partners to work together using existing resources can often help achieve community goals without new funds being needed. The price of this sort of diverse collaboration is the price and patience it takes to build strong relationships. It does take time for people and group to work together to build trust that helps us all focus on the community goals we share as opposed to dwelling on the things that make us different. We find that, over time, this makes for stronger, healthier communities.”

By: Deborah Clark, MLIS, AHIP
Healthy Communities COI Leader
clarkd@wmhcc.org | (207) 744-6196

For further information:
ACHI Community Health Assessment Toolkit
http://www.assesstoolkit.org/
Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP)
Community assessment guide
http://www.naccho.org/topics/infrastructure/mapp/framework/index.cfm