Category Archives: community health

How to Combat Childhood Obesity: A Detailed Guide for Parents, Children and Health Practitioners

By Bradley University’s Online Master of Science in Nursing program. This story was originally posted on Bradly University’s website.

In the early 1970s, approximately 6.1 percent of children ages 12-19 in the United States were obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By 2011-2012, that figure had more than tripled to 20.5 percent.

This is problematic, considering that not only has the number of children with obesity risen in the country, but more kids are at risk of facing bullying, lower self-esteem and chronic health problems because of their condition. Additionally, children with obesity are more likely to continue to be obese as adults, the CDC reports, making them more susceptible to serious health conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and several types of cancer. Continue reading →

A Tale of Two Cities with One Common Goal: To Improve Breastfeeding Support for Low Income Mothers in Marion County, IN

By Julie Patterson, PhD, MBA, RDN, LDN, Northern Illinois University; Lindsay Moore-Otsby, MD, HealthNet; Carrie Bonsack, DNP, CNM, HealthNet, and Kay Johnson, HealthNet 

Our story begins with an internal champion, a physician whose personal struggles with breastfeeding inspired the creation of a breastfeeding clinic at HealthNet. She engaged internal and external stakeholders to develop a breastfeeding model of care in collaboration with Northern Illinois University. This model aims to improve breastfeeding support and outcomes at HealthNet, and ultimately could serve as a model for other clinics to improve breastfeeding disparities. This project has succeeded in many ways, particularly in highlighting the need for multipronged, multidisciplinary breastfeeding support efforts not only within the clinic system itself, but also in collaboration with local support services. Continue reading →

Increasing Breastfeeding Support at Erie Family Health Centers

By Misty Romero, BA, RN, IBCLC and Hrishikesh T. Shetty, Institutional Giving Manager, Erie Family Health Centers 

Through NACCHO’s Building a Breastfeeding Support Model for Community Health Centers’ eight-month project, Erie Family Health Centers, a community health center network comprising 13 sites, was able to standardize and improve breastfeeding support throughout the organization and make services more accessible to patients. To reflect Erie’s mission and evidence-based medical practice, we updated our organization-wide breastfeeding and employee pumping policies and procedures to align with state and federal standards. We reconvened our internal workgroup; The Erie Breastfeeding Committee (EBC) and increased Erie’s organizational capacity by training our lactation specialists as trainers, who then trained more staff. Finally, we improved our clinic environment to be supportive of breastfeeding. Continue reading →

Leveraging Partnerships and Strengthening Connections to Support Breastfeeding Families

By Erica Peterson, MD, MPH, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Bluestem Health; Tami Frank, Partnership for Healthy Lincoln; and Karina Vargas, CLC, Bluestem Health

While the need to better support breastfeeding families in safety net clinics is well recognized, internal resources are often limited. Likewise, many community-based initiatives have difficulty engaging high- risk families who would benefit most from their efforts and supports. With funding from NACCHO’s initiative “Building a Breastfeeding Support Model for Community Health Centers”, the goal of the project’s cost-effective approach was to strengthen and leverage community partnerships, enhance internal systems, and provide ongoing training to all staff. Continue reading →

Opioid Settlement Funds Must Go Where They’re Needed Most—Treatment and Prevention

By Dana Fields-Johnson, MPA, Program Manager and Sarah Mittermaier, Communications Coordinator, Prevention Institute 

As thousands of cities and counties hard-hit by the opioid crisis move closer to settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors, it’s time to talk about how communities can use these funds to meet urgent needs for treatment and invest in what it will truly take to stop this epidemic: preventing people from becoming addicted to opioids in the first place.

As we face up to the magnitude of the opioid crisis—estimated to have cost the U.S. over $1 trillion from 2001 to 2017, with a human toll that can’t be calculated—we need to learn from what has and hasn’t worked in past public health settlements and set more stringent parameters around how opioid settlement funds will be used. Continue reading →

Streamlining Breastfeeding Support and Education in a Federally Qualified Health Center in New York City

By Lindsay DuBois, MPH, CLC, Associate Director; and Melissa Olson, RD, Nutritionist, Community Healthcare Network 

In New York City, we have witnessed staggering inequities in maternal health outcomes, which is largely driven by racial discrimination.[1] This inequity extends to breastfeeding rates. Through NACCHO’s Building a Breastfeeding Support Model for Community Health Center grant, Community Healthcare Network (CHN) implemented a project to improve organizational policies and practices to help increase breastfeeding rates within our low-income, African American community. This eight-month (February to September–2019) breastfeeding initiative was a multipronged approach to address the core tenets of breastfeeding: promotion, protection, and support within our network of health centers. Continue reading →

NACCHO Book Club — Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

By Emily Yox, MPH, Global Health Program Analyst, NACCHO

Each month, we will bring you a new public health book, read and reviewed by NACCHO staff. We hope to provide a well-rounded reading list that you will find enjoyable as well as informative.

Our second book recommendation, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, was published in 2017 and written by sociologist Matthew Desmond. Evicted follows eight families as they struggle to find and maintain consistent housing in Milwaukee’s low-income rental market. As the book’s website states: “without a home, everything else falls apart.” Desmond explores both the political and cultural systems that create systemic poverty, the role that housing plays in this system, and the significant social and health effects that directly influence an individual’s ability to thrive. Continue reading →