Healthy Steps for Young ChildrenSM

E-UPDATE

May 2005 Issue

Stories


CEU for Nurses Using the Healthy Steps Multimedia Kit

Continuing Education Credits (CEUs) for nurses are now available nationwide through Advocate Health Care of Chicago and the Illinois Nurses Association for users of the Healthy StepsSM Interactive Multimedia Training & Resource Kit (MMK). Advocate Health Care is an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the Illinois Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

The award-winning MMK contains a user's manual, a set of nine videos, and a fully interactive, multimedia CD-ROM that takes the user from an introduction to Healthy Steps to on-screen examples of how Healthy Steps Specialists interact with families. It also contains downloadable written materials to distribute to parents and for use by the medical practice. For more information on the CEU, contact Anita Berry at Anita.Berry@advocatehealth.com. For more information on the MMK, go to www.healthysteps.org and click on the MMK icon.

Continuing medical education credits for use of the MMK are available from the Boston University School of Medicine (BU). BU is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education to physicians. BU designates this education activity for a maximum of 18 Category 1 credits (2 credits per videocassette) toward AMA Physician's Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those credits he or she actually spent in the activity. For more information, please contact Mike Barth by email at mbarth@icfi.com.

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Healthy Steps Multimedia Kit Used by Colorado Public Health Nursing Program

Healthy Steps practices have known how much one can learn from the Healthy StepsSM Interactive Multimedia Training & Resource Kit (MMK). Now in Boulder County, CO, Public Health nurses providing home visiting and other services to children with special needs have learned that the MMK increases the quality of their service. Mary Adler, RN, CPNP, Child Health Nursing Coordinator at Boulder, tells us that she sought infrastructure and protocols “so that we did not reinvent the wheel, but we found what we needed and much more.” Having learned about Healthy Steps at a Colorado public health conference poster session (by Becky Utt of Grand Junction), Mary’s department purchased the MMK (and eventually the CD-ROM for each of five nurses) to provide consistency and quality assurance in content knowledge. Healthy Steps provides the knowledge and examples the nurses need in areas like parenting and acute behavioral problems, as well as normal growth and development. On home visits, the nurses use the Quick Check Lists as the guide. “The MMK has been really helpful in providing a solid foundation and building an infrastructure for our work,” Mary Adler says.

Clearly there is a place for Healthy Steps and its MMK wherever children are seen.

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New Healthy Steps Site in Oxford, MS

The Boston University Healthy Steps Training Team, led by Margot Kaplan-Sanoff, conducted a weekend training session for the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ new Healthy Steps site in Oxford, MS in mid-April. The practice, Children’s Clinic of Oxford, is one of only two pediatric practices serving several counties around Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi. It is staffed by two pediatricians and two nurse practitioners along with three nurses and the new Healthy Steps Specialist. As a kick-off event prior to the three-day training, the practice invited all early care and education providers in the area to an introductory lunch to learn more about Healthy Steps from Margot Kaplan-Sanoff, to understand how this new Healthy Steps practice might interact with their work, and to meet the new Healthy Steps staff. Providers from early intervention, home visiting, audiology and speech pathology, the newborn nursery, hospital public relations and the public schools attended. Dee Arch, supervisor of Healthy Steps Specialists in Sarasota, FL, participated in the training and said, "I came to this training to learn as much as I could about the program so I could better support the nurses I supervise who serve as Healthy Steps Specialists. I learned so much that I can share with them and with the pediatric practices where they see families.”

The Mississippi AAP chapter is sponsoring a second Healthy Steps site, this one in Canton MS. Training for this site will be held at Boston University School of Medicine Wednesday-Thursday, June 29-30, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Personnel from Healthy Steps sites and those interested in Healthy Steps are welcome to attend. If you are interested in doing so, please contact Margot Kaplan-Sanoff at MKaplan-Sanoff@acf.hhs.gov or 617-565-1105.

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Healthy Steps Evaluation Data Shed Light on Effects of Maternal Depression

The February 2005 edition of Pediatrics includes an article by Dr. Cynthia Minkovitz and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University, and describes the effects of maternal depression and its relationship to children’s receipt of health care. The data are from the National Evaluation of Healthy Steps for Young Children which shows that children whose mothers reported depressive symptoms at two to four months after birth had decreased odds of receiving age-appropriate health maintenance visits and vaccinations, and increased odds of using the emergency room in the first three years of the child’s life. The authors report that early screening for maternal depressive symptoms, combined with proper guidance and referrals, could contribute to the improved patterns of receipt of health care services for young children. To learn more, view the abstract and full article online.

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Healthy Steps in Phoenix

During a recent site visit to Phoenix, Margaret Mahoney and Mike Barth visited Phoenix Children’s Hospital, which is using Healthy Steps to train residents and provides services in a completely bilingual environment. They met with DeAnn Davies, the Healthy Steps Program Coordinator in Phoenix and Healthy Steps Specialist at the hospital, and Nora Carrillo, another Healthy Steps Specialist at Phoenix Children’s. DeAnn Davies is leading a significant expansion of Healthy Steps in the Greater Phoenix Area. They also visited Banner Children’s Hospital at Banner Desert Medical Center, at which Healthy Steps is implemented in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU). The Healthy Steps Specialist, Pam Klatt Michael, focuses on first-time parents of premature babies, meets the parents in the NICU and sees them at home. Ms. Klatt Michael also goes with the family to the first well baby visit with the physician, which greatly simplifies the transition from the worry and insecurity that a family with a child in the NICU typically feels to a calmer family-physician relationship. Margaret and Mike also met with representatives of The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, which is funding many of the Healthy Steps activities.

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Healthy Steps Evaluation Data Made Broadly Available

Data used in the Healthy Steps for Young Children Program National Evaluation are now available to the broad research community through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. These data report on effects of Healthy Steps on the child’s health and development and more specifically on parents' knowledge about early nurturing of infants, parents' involvement in their children's development, parents' practices that improve the health, safety, and health care utilization of their children, and quality of pediatric care. The data sources include enrollment questionnaires, parent interviews when children were 2 to 4 and 30 to 33 months of age, medical records reviews through 32 months, and Healthy Steps Specialist contact logs. These sources provide information on child's health, parenting practices, family demographic characteristics, vaccinations, medical visits and referrals, hospitalizations and emergency room use, and the Healthy Steps Specialist contact with Healthy Steps families. The data can be accessed at http://www.childcareresearch.org/location/ccrca5011. Users of the data must have access to a skilled SAS, SPSS or STATA programmer.

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Healthy Steps Funders Meet

Funders of Healthy Steps met in San Francisco on February 23, 2005 in conjunction with Grantmakers In Health to hear updates about Healthy Steps programs across the country. Reports covered: expansions of Healthy Steps in Phoenix, Kansas City, and North Carolina; the mobile van delivery of Healthy Steps in Detroit and support for families with a child in the NICU in Phoenix; continuing growth and development of Healthy Steps in greater Chicago and influence on early childhood policy in Illinois; plans for Healthy Steps in Boston; continued implementation and marketing of Healthy Steps in Allentown, PA; and the plans for a new Healthy Steps site in Evansville, IN. Pleased with the program’s progress, the funders expressed a desire to continue to meet and to be kept informed about Healthy Steps as it continues to evolve.

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Great Summary of Healthy Steps

Anyone looking for a overview of Healthy Steps, its rationale, outcomes, and role in pediatric care should read and give to others the article, “Healthy Steps: A Case Study of Innovation in Pediatric Practice." The article was published in Pediatrics in September 2004 and authored by Barry Zuckerman, MD and Healthy Steps colleagues. The full text is available online. In addition, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's newsletter, Advances, will publish a summary of the article in June 2005. For a general overview of Healthy Steps, the Healthy Steps brochure is available. You can view it at www.healthysteps.org and obtain copies from Alisa Meerovich at ameerovich@icfi.com.

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Healthy Steps Child Health and Development Record

Parents like this Record so much. English and Spanish language versions of The Healthy Steps Child Health and Development Record, an important element in the implementation of Healthy Steps, can be purchased through the Program Office for $1.25 each. Please contact Alisa Meerovich at ameerovich@icfi.com to order your copies.

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