Conference Highlights:

Fitness guru, Bridget Smith started each day off with a heart thumbing workout session called Relax Your Mind, Recharge Your Body, and Revive Your Soul

Tonya Lewis Lee, Richard David, Michael Lu and Yolanda Padilla headlined the conference with a plenary on The Impact of Race on Birth Outcomes: Examining the “Now What?”

The documentary, “Crisis in the Crib: Saving Our Nation’s Babies,” was shown and followed with a panel discussion with Tonya Lewis Lee (the director) and the Office of Minority Health Preconception Peer Educators

John Schlitt, Director of the Pew Home Visiting Campaign of the Pew Charitable Trusts, gave a brief overview on the future of home visitation and how it will affect Healthy Start

Dr. Peter Van Dyck, HRSA/MCHB Associate Administrator and Mary Wakefield, PhD, RN, Administrator,

Health Resources and Services Administration provided remarks to conference attendees and an MCHB update.

Male involvement was again an important focus at the conference with a luncheon plenary (“It Takes Two to Tango: Defining the Role of the Expectant Father”) of panelist Willie Parker, Ronald Warren and Jermaine Bond led by Kenneth Scarborough, Male Involvement  Coordinator.

The Kellogg Infant Mortality & Racism Action Learning Collaborative was highlighted with a panel of Healthy Start staff who presented their involvement with the project and lessons learned.

Conference Presentations:

Promoting Healthy Mental Development: A Bright Futures Online Curriculum
Jeanne M. Anastasi, MA

The Life Course Health Development Community: One City's Experience
Patricia Brantingham, Executive Director, Perinatal Network of Monroe County

Blueprint for Action: Using the Life-Course Perspective to Develop an Interconceptional Care Protocol for Case Managers
Tamara Wrenn, Senior Consultant, Practice Matters, LLC Consulting Firm

Illinois Interconceptional Care Program: A Best Practice Model
Peg Dublin, Project Director, Westside Healthy Start

Involving Families: Strategies for Success
Charlene Smith, Director, SHIELDS for Families Healthy Start
Ronna Montgomery, Research Analyst, SHIELDS for Families Healthy Start

A Stimulus Program with Returns on Investment: North Carolina Healthy Start Reduces Racial Disparities in Perinatal Outcomes
Ellen M. Shanahan, MA, NC Healthy Start Baby Love Plus Initiative Evaluation Partner
Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

What Fathers Need: An Assessment of the Needs of Fathers in East St. Louis, Illinois
Jeffery Mayer, PhD and Mobolaji Ibitoye, MHS
School of Public Health, Saint Louis University

The Blues Prior, During and After Labor: Es Dificil ser Mujer? The Health Education Action for Latinas (HEAL) Model
Maria Lourdes F. Reyes, MD, MPH

Moving Data from Program to Policy: State Examples from the Pregnancy Risk Monitoring System (PRAMS)
Letitia Williams, MPH, Epidemiologist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

RELAX, RELATE, RELEASE: A Stress Management Curriculum for African American Childbearing Women
Marguerite Morgan, LMSW, PhD, CAAC, Mental Health Coordinator, Strong Beginnings Program, Grand Rapids, MI

Baby Basics: Bringing Literacy to Expecting Moms of Cleveland
Angela Newman, Deputy Project Director, MomsFirst
Kelly Lubeck, Program and Training Director, The What to Expect Foundation

Share and Play – A Support Group for Moms and Babies
Mary Wilt, BSN, RN, CCM, Nurse Care Coordinator, Virginia Healthy Start Initiative/Loving Steps Program – Norfolk Site

Using the Perinatal Period of Risk Assessment to Build a Community-Wide Intervention Effort in Richmond, Virginia
Saba W. Masho, MD, DrPH

A Participatory Approach to Achieve Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Research and Evaluation: The Healthy Start Participant Survey
So O'Neil, Senior Researcher, Mathematica Policy Research