Impacting Infant Mortality by Network Building in Lake County, Indiana

 Angie Martin, Director of Administration, HealthVisions Midwest and Network Coordinator  Risë Ratney, Executive Director of Northwest Indiana Healthy Start and Chair of the MCH Network  Don Barnes, President and CEO of HealthVisions Midwest  Connie Leal, RN, IBCLC, Director of Maternal Child Health Program of Lake County, HealthVisions Midwest 2

 Background and Overview  Mission, Planning and Structure  Successes/Challenges/Next Steps 3

 HealthVisions Midwest (HVM) is the sponsoring organization  Who is HealthVisions Midwest?  We work in communities to: ◦ Advocate for the poor and powerless ◦ Nurture and foster leadership ◦ Develop and facilitate partnerships ◦ Address systemic community health needs ◦ Advance environmental health 4

 Our Vision “Create healthy communities by empowering people to live a healthy life” 5

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 In 2002, HVM was awarded a Title V Maternal Child Health grant to provide Prenatal Care Coordination services  Target: medically and socially high-risk women in Lake County, with focus on East Chicago and Gary  The Maternal Child Health Network of Lake County was developed out of this original grant 7

 The Problem: A Silo Sea ◦ High minority populations with high poverty rates, language barriers, low or lack of access to health care and high infant mortality rates with Moms experiencing significant health disparities ◦ There were many clinical, community and social service organizations in Lake County that provided maternal child health services ◦ Everyone was working on their own agenda 8

 The Silo Sea ◦ MCH organizations doing good work ◦ Competing for clients ◦ Competing for funding ◦ Replicating services ◦ Overlapping service areas 9

 Development of the Network model  Organizations to share information and expertise  Work towards common goals, including systemic change  Hired a full-time staff person to coordinate and support the Network project 10

 Network Mission The purpose of the Network is to convene a team of local experts to assess data, recommend policy changes, implement best practices and educate parents and the public on methods to reduce/eliminate behaviors that contribute to fetal and infant deaths. 11

 Partnerships and MOUs were developed with agencies/providers to become members  Difficult due to competition and silo mentality  Able to convene membership of 35 organizations, with 20 regularly attending 12

 WIC  Healthy Families-Mental Health America  Lake County Minority Health Coalition  Parents as Teachers  Managed Care Organizations  Health Departments  Community Health Centers  FQHCs  Indiana University Northwest, School of Medicine, Genetics  Methadone Clinic  Promotores de Salud Maternal e Infantil/Great Beginnings/NATALE-PNCC programs  Local hospitals  Gary Maternal Child Health Clinic  Healthy Start  Purdue Extension-Nutrition Education Program  Indiana Perinatal Network support/resource 13

 Checked to see if the right people were at the table  Met monthly for 1 hour over lunch  Shared organizational events, changes, etc.  Although there were successes, there were many missed opportunities due to a rigid silo mentality. 14

 In 2012, the monthly meeting had become more of a sharing of individual events over lunch  New Bylaws were developed  Elections were held for officers and term limits were imposed  A facilitated brainstorming session was held to flesh out direction for the group  Four action groups were formed 15

 Started educational sessions at Network meetings to broaden our knowledge base ◦ The North Central Sickle Cell Initiative ◦ The Lake County Black Breastfeeding Coalition ◦ The Division of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control and Office of Primary Care and Rural Health from the ISDH  The Membership was reinvested and started working together again 16

 Infant Mortality awareness campaign with billboard and movie theater ads  “When the Bough Breaks” DVD  Annual Perinatal Disparities conference  Provider Education: ◦ Nutrition ◦ African Americans and Stress ◦ Physical Abuse and Child Abuse ◦ SIDS and SUIDS ◦ Substance Abuse and Addiction ◦ Safe Sleep from a Pathology Perspective ◦ Breastfeeding and Safe Sleep ◦ Lake County FIMR and Infant Mortality statistics 17

 Safe Sleep campaign included: ◦ Local hospitals OB/GYN Department assessment ◦ Safe sleep kits distributed to providers to take back to their organizations and clients ◦ Facebook page ◦ Safe Sleep commercial ads on local radio stations in English and Spanish 18

 Local DFS offices were not promoting Presumptive Eligibility ◦ The Network developed a poster to place in DFS offices ◦ One phone call to a regional director allowed us to get informational posters placed in local DFS offices 19

 The membership working together and trusting each other  MOUs outside of the Network between member organizations  Sharing of grant opportunities  Shared problem resolution 20

 Keeping the right people at the table  Keeping members and action groups engaged year round  Funding  Capacity of volunteer members to support group  Trust and eliminating the silo mentality 21

 Moving to a neighborhood focus  Collective Impact initiative in East Chicago  Periods of Perinatal Risk  Mental Health issues  Faith-based community opportunity  Gary’s Strong Cities, Strong Communities designation 22

 Angie Martin, Director of Administration, HealthVisions Midwest and Network Coordinator  Risë Ratney, Executive Director of Northwest Healthy Start and Chair of the MCH Network  Don Barnes, President and CEO of HealthVisions Midwest  Connie Leal, RN, Director of Maternal Child Health Program of Lake County, HealthVisions Midwest 23

The Maternal Child Health Network of Lake County For more information contact: Angie Martin, MCH Network Coordinator 24