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The completion of the
Women's
Health Data Report 2006 [pdf; 1.90mb] marked a significant milestone in the history of
women's health in Florida. This landmark report serves several functions.
First and foremost, having a comprehensive compilation of women's health
data in a user-friendly format captured the attention of policy leaders and
galvanized support for addressing women's health concerns. The report
provides the information base needed for developing health policies that are
responsive to the needs of all women, and we used the report to guide
efforts during the
first statewide Strategic Planning Meeting for
improving the health status of women. This information also provides an
assessment template for benchmarking progress in women's health statewide
and will serve as a blueprint for similar community assessments of women's
health throughout the state. Finally, developing the report was an
interagency effort and mobilized the ongoing support of key leaders who can
affect women's health through their respective agencies.
Qualitative Research
We conducted a
qualitative research study
[pdf; 79.60kb] to get a statewide,
demographically cross-cutting snapshot of adolescents' and adult women's
perceived health issues. A total of 370 adolescents and adult women
participated in the survey and facilitated community conversations. Survey
questions centered on perceived health status and self-care, barriers to
health care, and environmental and social health risk. We translated the
questions into Haitian Creole and Spanish to accommodate as many women as
possible. With the assistance of the Florida All Women's Health Coalition, a
grassroots advocacy organization, we conducted his assessment in four
representative regions of the state. The findings complement the
quantitative data by putting a face and voice to women's health concerns.
The department hired MAJAICA, LLC, to design and conduct the research study.
Advantages of using this approach included:
- the vendor had access to an emerging statewide coalition dedicated to
improving women's health,
- collaboration with the statewide organization provided access to the
coalition members' respective networks, which enhanced participant
recruitment, an
- the vendor engaged the coalition in helping to design, administer and
interpret the survey and community conversations, thus mobilizing
resources that the department did not control or to which we did not have
immediate access.
Maximize Resources
This section highlights opportunities we found to maximize resources. It was
important to think broadly about resources when searching for innovative
ways to build momentum with limited staff and funding. For example, beside
the obvious fiscal and personnel resources, which are too often in high
demand and low reserve, other potential resources include planning time,
meetings, conferences, consultations, and other sources of free assistance.
We seized opportunities to use all of these as described in this section.
Planning, Meetings, and Conferences
Maximizing resources requires planning, time, and information. Effective
meetings, promotions, conferences, and other productions require time to
think and plan strategically. More often than not, there is simply no time
for this important step. That is when it is especially important to maximize
planning resources.
One way to maximize planning resources is to let others do the planning for
you. For instance, we needed to convene public forums to gather input into
the development of the women's health plan but we lacked dedicated personnel
for the project and funding for the costs of large meetings. The solution
was to piggy-back on existing meetings and get on the agendas of natural
allies. Such was the case when we needed to quickly do a
"SWOT Analysis."
[pdf; 53.12kb]
This provided three opportunities to gather input from a heterogeneous group
of individuals around the state with varying expertise, affiliations, and
interests. Moreover, the only planning required was the development of
assessment questions. Agency leaders who were attending these meetings
facilitated the community dialogues using the prepared assessment questions.
The first forum was held via teleconference in conjunction with a statewide
county health department directors meeting. The live video linkage between
Tampa and Tallahassee maximized participation and input from leaders at the
community-level and experts at the state-level office. We offered the second
forum as part of the department's annual Women's Health Update for nurse
practitioners and physicians in Orlando, where we assessed priorities of
clinicians who are providing women's health services to clients throughout
Florida. We held the third forum as a post-conference workshop in
conjunction with Florida's annual Partners in Perinatal Health Sharing
Solutions conference.
With limited resources, unfunded mandates are not uncommon. The
legislatively
mandated Governor's Conference on Women's Health fell
into this category - mandated conference, no funding. We found the solution
in partnerships - both internal and external to our agency. Having the force
of legislation behind these partnerships and the charge to sponsor a
Governor's Conference garnered interest and support from collaborators not
named in the statute. In fact, our first year's conference was so successful
that we welcomed the opportunity to coordinate another conference the next
year, even though the legislation did not require that it be held annually.
We found a silver lining in the legislatively-mandated Governor's Conference
on Women's Health - new partnerships. The first ever, two-day Governor's
Conference on Women's Health rallied 300 legislators, community advocates,
state workers, health care providers, and other stakeholders, who came
together to voice their concerns about women's health issues and discuss
solutions for addressing those concerns. The University of South Florida
Health co-sponsored the first conference and after having such a successful
inaugural event, we had 19 organizational co-sponsors at the
Second
Governor's Conference on Women's Health.
Consultants
Maximizing resources requires information about what others are doing. You
can gather some of this information from your desk using a networked
computer but our experience taught us that the greatest pearls of wisdom
came from personal connections with real people. For example, a master
calendar may exist that identifies upcoming events that are supported by or
important to your agency. Knowing about such resources is an important first
step. An even more important step is to get the right people involved when
you undertake a major work effort. Having knowledgeable people involved will
prevent you from recreating the wheel and save valuable time. But, the
question is, how do you know who is "in the know" This presents an
opportunity to introduce another important resource, namely consultants.
During the formative stages of establishing our state women's health
infrastructure, we found two consultants to be particularly helpful: an
individual who works in the department and an external consultant. The
internal consultant cost nothing other than the employee's time. The
external consultant charged less than $4,000, which was worth the
investment.
The first consultant was an individual who works within the department but
whose primary responsibilities are not in women's health. One of the early
tasks of the grant was to identify staff with institutional knowledge to
recruit for the Intra-Agency Women's Health Committee. Supervisors were
asked for their recommendations. However, we needed a second set of eyes to
review the list to assure that it was complete. We consulted with a policy
leader within the department who had an excellent global understanding of
both our grant goals and of the various units throughout the department to
make final recommendations for committee membership.
The second consultant facilitated
the work of the Intra-Agency Women's Health Committee and maximized
productivity. This consultant had a breadth of experience in women's health
issues (from another state), which paralleled the work we were undertaking.
Comparable experience was a key factor in identifying the right consultant.
Consultation included both telephone and face-to-face technical assistance
in planning and infrastructure development. One small example of how this
consultant helped us is that she recommended that we extend our reach beyond
the programmatic representatives and recruit someone from the Data Analyses
Unit to our Intra-Agency Women's Health Committee. It turned out that
including that representative saved us from duplicating efforts when
developing an Inventory of Women's Health Programs.
[pdf; 20.4kb] The Data Analyses
Unit representative knew about an institutional assignment that her unit
updates annually and happened to contain the program descriptions we needed
to document. This consultant was also very helpful in setting the stage for
strategic planning, providing valuable input into the early stages of
implementation.
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