First published on April 6, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Dr. Karen Liller has been a child and adolescent injury prevention researcher for a quarter of a century.  A professor in the USF College of Public Health’s Department of Community and Family Health and a member of the Florida Injury Prevention Advisory Group, she worked with a Tampa General program called More Health in the mid-1990s to help evaluate its health education programs.  One of those programs promoted bicycle helmets for children.

Dr. Karen Liller

“I evaluated their program, and I started observational studies of children’s bicycle helmet use in Hillsborough County,” Liller said.  “I was monitoring this because, as part of the Injury Group, I knew this bill had been denied two times before.  We were all part of the advocacy efforts with Tallahassee between the state of Florida program, More Health and the college to get this passed.”

A natural proponent of requiring kids to wear helmets when they rode their bikes, Liller had her interest piqued.  From casual observation alone, she surmised that few were.  Determined to put scientifically collected numbers to the problem, she and a cadre of her graduate students set about the task of collecting data.

From low expectations to high hopes, then action

“I was focused on unintentional injuries in children,” she said.  “Nationally, this was a huge issue.  I had some colleagues at Harborview Injury Prevention Program in the state of  Washington, and they were some of the early leaders nationally in helmet use.  So I naturally got very, very interested and started looking, started conducting observational studies, because I didn’t know:  What is the helmet use rate? “I developed and performed community observations,” she said.  “I would hire my grad assistants, and they would stand on corners doing observational surveys of kids in helmets.  We mapped out the whole county, and I had them on streets everywhere.  We had a whole protocol of where we wanted to be, because we wanted to capture observational surveys in many different places – in community sites, in schools, not near schools, etc., so we had a good idea of what was going on in Hillsborough County.”

As low as Liller’s expectations were, reality turned out to be even worse.

“I can tell you, it was pitifully low,” she said.  “For children under 16, it was about three percent.”

Liller set out on a concentrated campaign to get a helmet law passed.  It already had languished and died in two previous legislative sessions, and she was determined to make the third try count.

“I did many radio spots and TV spots and Good Morning Whomever promoting bicycle helmets as the law was working its way through the legislature,” she recalled.

“I wanted to get ahold of it,” she said, “because I knew this was a national issue, and I knew states were starting to pass laws.  Florida is a tough state to get a law passed for children’s injury prevention.  In fact, we just got the booster seat law done.  We were one of the last states to do that.  I knew it was going to be a battle.  So, I knew I’d better get started early.” Liller learned through focus groups that legislators weren’t the only people she needed to convince.  Some parents didn’t want a law telling them to put helmets on their kids’ heads.  After all, bicycle shops already were selling more helmets.  McDonald’s was giving out helmet discount coupons and safe rider certificates.  Why should there be a legal mandate?

“My answer to them was, ‘Do you have a driver’s license?  Yes?  Well, the government told you to do that.’

“It always surprised me when parents would argue with me on this issue.  The famous one for me was, ‘I rode a bike all the time when I was a kid, and I never got a head injury.’  I’d say, ‘When was that?  Where was that?’  And it would be some idyllic little community in some other state, and I’d say, ‘Try riding a bike in Tampa now, and get back to me on that.  The world has changed.  The roads have changed.  The danger level has changed.”

Clearly, the law’s chief proponent had taken on a daunting task, but being part of the state’s first college of public health had its rewards.  Dr. Charles Mahan, state health director under Gov. Lawton Chiles, was a valuable ally.  COPH was still the only school of public health in Florida, and COPH professors were trekking all the way to Tallahassee to teach weekly classes at the state health department office.  Through the department’s close working relationship with COPH, Mahan already had known Liller and had been supportive of her efforts.

Dr. Charles Mahan

“We knew that Karen was really focused on getting a child helmet law through, and certainly, we were very much in favor of that,” said Mahan, who was COPH dean by the time the measure was in its third incarnation.  Mahan had known Chiles since well before the latter began his two terms as governor.

When Mahan was a medical student at the University of Florida, Chiles became interested in his work on infant mortality.  Personal and professional bonds soon followed.

“When he was a senator, I would go around the country and hold hearings with him,” Mahan recalled.  “He would do all the talking, but I would help him figure out what to say, depending on what the issue was.”

Mahan knew the governor well enough to know he was predisposed to children’s health issues.

“Any issue related to children was something that Gov. and Mrs. Chiles were supportive of,” Mahan said.  “Anything that needed his support on children’s issues for safety or survival or whatever, he would tell the staff – me and everyone else – to make sure that it got supported.” With the encouragement of a popular governor, the proposal was gaining momentum.  The awareness raised by the news of the pending legislation helped engender educational outreaches that helped the ball roll faster.

“Betty Castor, who became president of USF, was head of education at the time,” Mahan said, “and the school systems jumped right in with educational efforts.”

Those collective efforts eventually generated the irresistible momentum that carried the measure over the finish line.

“With Charlie’s support and the governor’s, on the third attempt, it was successful,” Liller said.  “And I testified and did a variety of things locally, as well, for the bill.  A colleague of mine also did a cost-effectiveness study, and he also testified with that in Tallahassee.  I think it was a combination of all of these things.  We kept sending the legislators our research findings, and with all the backing, eventually, in 1996, the bill passed.”

A victory not etched in stone

“Bike helmets are an investment we should make to ensure our children’s health and safety,” Chiles declared as he signed the bill onto law.

The measure became effective on Jan. 1, 1997, and for the next 12 months, it was easy for anyone to live with.  A violator would receive a warning and a bicycle safety brochure.  As of Jan. 1, 1998, however, that brochure was delivered with a $17 citation.  It was a light fine as fines go, and even it could be circumvented.

“After the first year, you could get a fine if the child was riding, was under the age of 16 and didn’t have a helmet on,” Liller said, “but you could get around that if you could show evidence of a bicycle helmet.”

That, of course, was only when the law was enforced, which, according to Liller, wasn’t – and still isn’t – very often.

“Police are very reluctant,” she said.  “I talk to them about how many tickets they’ve given, and usually the answer is ‘none,’ at least in Hillsborough County.  They’re very reluctant to stop a child on a bike.”

Nonetheless, she said, by 1998, helmet use had risen exponentially, to 67 percent in Hillsborough County.  So even without much enforcement, the law was accomplishing its purpose.

“I think the law has been great,” Liller said.  “We did an analysis of its efficacy.  We did show that helmet use has gone up, and we showed that injuries have gone down.  And that was great.  That was the intent of the law.  Injury prevention does its best, many times, when there’s a policy change or a legislative change, because it just reaches more people.”

Mahan agreed. “Having it as law is a big awareness raiser,” he said.  “It gets all over the papers and the news again and again.  The legislature is considering this measure.  That’s news.  The legislature passed it today.  That’s news.  The governor signed it into law.  That’s news again.  It went into effect today, so that’s news, too.

“For the majority of parents, who care so much about their kids, just the awareness-raising and then seeing other kids out there with their helmets on helped, but it took time.  As with any legislation, it takes about three years to get a good idea through.  It’s very hard to take a new idea on regulation to the legislature.”

“It was a very exciting time,” Liller said, “because, the first couple of times, I would go to the injury meetings, we’d work on the language of the law, and it just kept getting defeated.  The first year we did it, I think we just put it out there and said, ‘Let’s just see how it goes.’  The second year, we didn’t have the information about the penalty.  I still don’t like the penalty.  I don’t to this day.  But it was a really exciting process, and I’m so glad I was part of it.”

Still, Liller knows that no law is etched in stone.  The state threw a scare into helmet proponents and safety advocates in general when it partially repealed its motorcycle helmet law by limiting the requirement to riders under 21. “We were very afraid that they were going to repeal the bicycle helmet law, too, but so far, so good,” Liller said.  “They haven’t touched that law.  I think that’s because it’s for children.  I think if we would have had that helmet law for all ages, we would have been in trouble.”

“When I was at the state health office,” Mahan said, “the helmet law was a big plus, but at the same time, we lost the motorcycle helmet law, and that’s had tremendous consequences.”

The work continues

“We want it to become a norm,” Liller said of bicycle helmet use.  “We want it to be that, when these children have children, there won’t be any question when you get on a bike.  And we’re starting to see that.”

Mahan concurred.  He said he and his wife live two blocks from an elementary school, and the progress is easily visible.

“A lot of the kids are riding their bikes to school,” he said, “and every one of them has a helmet on.”

Work since the law’s passage has been geared toward bicycle helmet give-away programs.

“If you don’t have a helmet, we can find you one,” Liller said.  “We can find a program – Safe Kids, Tampa General, we can find somewhere to get you a helmet.”

Liller’s work on the law continues to influence safety initiatives.

“Our work has been in world publications about helmet use, about laws, about how it’s done,” she said.  “The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation wants to know about strategies, and it seems that the strategies that were developed in the ’90s – people are still really interested in those.  We were always pleased that our work is often cited as an example, even though many years have passed.”

Liller said she also is gratified to see the lasting validation of her and her colleagues’ methodology.

“It’s interesting that the work that we did is still being used.  If you run a program, you do some observational surveys.  You look at that helmet use on those kids.  You don’t just ask them.  You actually watch them.”

In the intervening years, Liller’s focus has shifted to high school sports injuries, but she remains committed to the legislation she helped to bring about, and she remains engaged with it, most recently as a content reviewer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Wisconsin Population Health Institute for strategies they want to propose for child safety seats – and yes, bicycle helmets. Her message for the naysayers remains the same.

“We’re not telling children they can’t ride bikes,” she said.  “We’re not telling children they can’t have fun or anything else we were accused of so often.  Basically, it’s just taking necessary precautions.  There’s been some literature that says we should let kids take more risks.  We don’t want to stop anyone from taking risks or having fun or getting exercise.  We just don’t want a child to die from a perfectly preventable head injury.  We’re smarter now.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.  Photos courtesy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, Helmets On Heads, County Mayo and other sources.

The post COPH helped drive state’s bicycle helmet law appeared first on College of Public Health News.

First published on July 13, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Jodi Ray is a bundle of energy when she talks about the project that has become her life’s work, Florida Covering Kids and Families, which is a part of the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies.

The founding program director was Mary Figg, a state representative for Hillsborough County.  After a year or two of preliminary maneuvers, the initiative began formally in 1999.  Figg had enlisted Ray, who has a master’s degree in mass communications, the year before to be program coordinator and handle all things media, including assisting her with crafting the successful request for that all-important initial grant.

“My job was to manage a multimedia campaign.  I’ve done a lot of mass communications on this job,” she said.  “In fact, I’d say I do more of that than anything else.”

The project was funded its first seven years by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to do outreach enrollment of children eligible for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid.  During that time, a staff of two more than doubled to five by 2006, then, when that funding ended, was cut all too literally in half, reduced to a project director, a coordinator and a half-time assistant: essentially, a staff of 2-1/2.  Fortunately, they had a dedicated network behind them.

Jodi Ray

“We have a state coalition,” Ray said, “a large collaboration of partners from around the state and local coalitions in almost every community in the state.  We came together and said, ‘Our mission is to get uninsured into coverage.’”

The coalition was initially mandated by the RWJF grant, Ray said.  It remains active today and includes some of its original members.  No question, it answered a critical need in 2006, when half the staff was asked to keep up with an exponential work-load increase created three years earlier.

Crying on the phone

“In 2003,” she explained, “the state ended all outreach efforts for CHIP.  So they literally boxed everything up and sent it to me.  They gave me their contact lists and all of their partnerships and said, ‘Could you please take this on?’  Now granted, there were no financial resources with that at the time.”

“The state also closed enrollment for CHIP in Florida for 18 months.  As a result of that, we lost over 300,000 kids in the Florida KidCare program.  In one month alone, we lost 40,000 kids.

“There was no statewide outreach initiative except us,” she said, “me and my other 1-1/2 people.  The number of calls I got was unbelievable.  People were calling and crying.  It was terrible.”

That situation started Ray on an 18-month crusade, talking to newspaper editorial boards, legislators, community leaders, almost anyone who would listen.

Committed to moving forward, she and the coalition began implementing a plan that was as innovative as it was aggressive:  Sign up as many kids as possible to a waiting list.  When the list reached 120,000, the New York Times took notice and gave the state a boatload of blistering press.  Not long after, the governor issued an executive order to enroll all the kids on the list, and open enrollment returned permanently four months later.

In 2007, a new governor, Charlie Crist, declared the uninsured rate among children appalling.  He brought the state agencies together, Ray said, and told them to figure out how to make it better, and fast.

“One of the things they did was decide to give us some resources,” Ray said.

A state contract and marketing materials soon followed, along with help from state agency staffs on routine but time-consuming matters like mailing.  Growth was back, and with it, ramped-up after-school activities and more engagement with local businesses.

The results since have ranged from impressive to remarkable.  Since the first open enrollment period began on Oct. 1, 2013, the project has gained national media coverage for enrolling about 2.5 million previously uninsured Floridians, twice the expectation.

“We expanded to focus on all the newly eligible uninsured to help them get into whatever coverage options are available,” Ray said, “whether under the Affordable Care Act in the marketplace or Medicaid or CHIP.  One way or another, we were going to help people who didn’t have coverage get health insurance so they could get access to health care services.

“Health care services are important, and having preventive care, all those things.  We talk about all those things being necessary, but you’re not getting in the door unless you have health insurance.  So that’s what we focus on: the first step, getting people in the door.”

That may be the focus, but there’s plenty more to do.

“We also do one-on-one application,” she said.  “We have consumers that actually sit down with us and do enrollment.  We do everything that involves connecting people to health coverage.

“We even do some health literacy.  How do you use health insurance?  How do you make an appointment to see a doctor?  For many of the uninsured, these are not obvious.”

“We work with all the agencies on both the state and federal levels that are involved in implementing health coverage, and we get out there and shake the bushes.”

Media and more

As much effort as is spent on finding the uninsured, many do find FCKF first, Ray said.

“We get cold calls for everything,” she said.  “I used to wonder sometimes how people find us, but I don’t wonder that anymore.  All you have to do is help somebody.  Then that person gives your number to somebody else.  We get a lot of calls by word of mouth.  We helped someone at some point, and even years later, we get a call from that person’s family member or friend who needs help.”

“The things that consumers come in here and tell you are unbelievable, sometimes heartbreaking.  That’s the other thing that’s really tough,” she said.  “I’ve gotten calls that have made me literally get up and walk around the building a few times because the stories are terrible: the family living in a car; the kid who’s got some kind of horrible heart condition; the mother who had CHIP coverage, but something went wrong with her renewal, it got dropped, it’s Christmastime and she has no money because the asthma medication she had to pick up for her son cost $400.”

While grants provide the funding, the University of South Florida and College of Public Health make it work, Ray said.

“Our work has been very well supported by both the College of Public Health and the University.  I say this out loud every day:  I don’t think anybody doing this work could be in a better place.  I don’t think there’s any way Dr. Petersen could support our work any more than she does.  We get so much support from one end of this university to the other, and we worked with everybody through open enrollment.”

Student Health Services, the libraries, the Morsani College of Medicine and the Marshall Center were regular haunts, as were the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses.

From the beginning, Ray, who became director upon Figg’s retirement in 2003, has been the media go-to person from the beginning, and that responsibility has grown as exponentially as the project itself.

“We do four press conferences a year.  I spend a ridiculous amount of time talking to reporters.  Just in the first open enrollment period alone, I probably did 80 or 90 interviews with reporters from one end of the country to the other.”

The result was major articles in The New Yorker, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, to name a few, as well as pieces widely disseminated by the Associated Press and Reuters, as well as personal visits from two national health secretaries.

Ray on Capitol Hill in a nationally televised discussion.

“During the first open enrollment period, we had the second-largest grant in the country,” Ray said.  “That, in itself, drew attention, and [U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius] came here, herself, and awarded the grant.  She came to the college, and that’s how I found out we’d gotten the grant.”

It’s little wonder, then, that what began with two people 17 years ago keeps a dozen in the USF office busy with training, policy work, education, outreach, grant-writing, communications, etc.  It’s an office full of multi-taskers, Ray said.

“We all do all of it,” she said.

Given the complexities of health insurance laws and regulations, not to mention a new set of rules for navigators, just keeping up is a task unto itself.

“We do have to make it a point to stay informed.  We’re constantly on webinars and trainings, reading policies and reading new rules.  We have our hands in a lot of different elements of public health, just because we have to.”

The toughest part of the job, she said, is not being able to help everyone.

“We still have a gap of folks who are not going to qualify for coverage they can afford because the state has not expanded Medicaid coverage,” she said.  “I’d like to see us be able to enroll everyone who has no access to health coverage.  I’d like to see that in less than five years, quite frankly.  I would hate for that to be a five-year goal.”

Ray makes it obvious that what she and her colleagues do at Florida Covering Kids and Families is what keeps her pumped with energy.

“It’s all very exciting,” she said.  “We’re right there at the front end of this, and that, in and of itself, is exhilarating.  I feel good about what we’ve been able to accomplish, so it’s all been worth the time and effort – and the stress and the exhaustion – because it’s paid off.  We’re actually having an impact, and people see it.”

Every flight needs a navigator

The federal navigator initiative aimed at getting people into the new health insurance marketplace has been a major focus of their work the past two years, as well as a major hallmark of their success.

“The navigators are tied specifically to the federal marketplace.” Ray explained, “Some states are not participating in the federal marketplace, but Florida happens to be one of those states that is.”

The federal program provides outreach enrollment funds.  The first funding opportunities began in 2013, Ray said, and her office applied for USF to get an award that would cover the state.  She and her team did all the grant writing.

“We had already been doing this work on the ground across the state to enroll kids in CHIP and Medicaid,” Ray said, “and many of the partners around the state had come to a consensus that it made perfect sense for us to be the applicant for this grant and take the lead.  So, what we did was look at the model that was already working and find a way to expand on that.”

The result was a $4.2-million award in 2013 to cover 64 of the state’s 67 counties, the exceptions being Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe, which submitted their own applications separately.

“The second year,” Ray said, “we went back to those partners again and asked them if they would like to join us for the 2014 application.  They said yes the second time around, so the second time around, we covered all 67 counties in Florida.”

The second award was worth $5.3-million.  Ray’s group had secured million-dollar grants for their Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollments, but those, which  had been their largest to date, are easily dwarfed by the Navigator grants.

Most of the funds are vested in the people who get the job done, Ray said.

“A lot of people.  I’m a big believer that priority number one should be the human resource.  The folks on the ground.  The folks who are out there doing the education, the communication, the one-on-one application assistants, the people who know the processes.  We know from our history of doing this and tons of research that these are the folks who keep people from getting lost along the way through the process.”

In one regard, Ray said, the Navigator’s work has only begun with the enrollment stage.

“They help people navigate the enrollment process and get to the point where they can be enrolled and covered, and they’re also key to helping people appropriately use health insurance,” she said.  “We want folks not just to get in, but we want them to keep their coverage and to use their coverage properly.

“When you’re connecting people to health care coverage for the first time, these are not innately understood concepts.  Insurance is actually a pretty complicated idea, and if you’ve never used it, you really can get overwhelmed.  If you have it and you’re not using it, then the tendency to understand its value can be diminished.  The Navigators and the Florida KidCare application assisters on the ground are essential for that piece of it.  It’s not just about filling out the forms.”

The numbers tell just how busy those people on the ground have been.

“The first year, the projected enrollment for the federal health insurance marketplaces in Florida was around 450,000, give or take,” Ray said.  “We ended up enrolling – with all partners across the state, not just the USF partners – almost a million.  We doubled the projections, basically.

“The second year, the last number I saw was about 1.6 million, but that didn’t include the last month, the limited special enrollment period for people who got hit with the tax penalties.”

As impressive as those figures are, their national rank may be more so, especially given California’s stand as by far the most populous state of the union.

“The first year, every month, we came in second in the country to California,” Ray said.  “This year, our enrollment here in Florida was higher than enrollment in any other state in the country.  It’s a pretty successful initiative in Florida.”

That seems understated, especially considering that it was the work of about 90 Navigators the first enrollment period and around 150 the second round.  Ray was quick to note, however, that Navigators weren’t the only people involved.

“There are more resources that go into managing this than just the enrollment folks,” she said.  “We have IT people involved, we have human resource people involved, we have grant administrators involved.  It’s an undertaking, for sure.  It’s all a team effort.”

A niche in the state’s public health

The stakes, along with the numbers, will be higher for the third round, since the funding will be for three years.  Ray is undaunted by the change and, in fact, favors it.  For one thing, it will provide greater continuity in enrollment services, she said.

“We won’t have the start-up delays that come with a grant ending,” she explained, “and then waiting for another grant to come in.”

Given the early success but also knowing the nature of the funding world, Ray is cautiously optimistic about future Navigator grants.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” she said.  “I feel like we’ve done a good job.  I think our outcomes have been really high.  Our partners at the federal level seem very pleased with the work that we’re doing.

“Florida certainly has been a shining star all the way through this.  Not because I was optimistic, but because I believed we were doing the right thing and that we knew what we were doing, I’m not surprised.  Because we didn’t go into this making up a plan of action.  We went into it with a sense of how it can be done, what the best practices were.  We had learned our lessons along the way.  We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel to do this.  All our collaborative partners made a big difference, too.

“I feel pretty good going into years three through five.  It’s going to be harder going into these years, because we’ve enrolled so many of the low-hanging fruit, so we really have to hone in on who we’re missing and whatever we need to do to make sure we’re not leaving people behind.

“This is our niche for the state of Florida in public health.  Whether it’s obesity or diabetes or getting cancer screenings, it’s very difficult for people to do anything about those things we talk about in public health if they don’t have health insurance.  So, I think we’re doing something valuable in contributing that first step to addressing some of these important public health issues that are so important.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.  Graphics courtesy of Florida Covering Kids and Families, CSPAN and Jodi Ray.

The post Kids and Families, navigator grants hallmarks of college’s state and national presence appeared first on College of Public Health News.

First published on June 4, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

It was January 1998, and the Florida Board of Regents had just promoted one of USF’s fledgling entities to major status with sublimely understated efficiency.

Following authorizations for a BS in dance education, a degree of undetermined level in occupational therapy and an MS in physical therapy, it was the last of four single-sentence items in the typically dry language of officialdom, replete with redundancy and excessive capitalization, on a State University System memo to Dr. Thomas Tighe, then USF provost: “Established the Type I Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies as a Type I Center (sic).”

The rationale for the Center’s status elevation cited the state’s “tremendous progress in improving the health status of pregnant women and infants, largely through the leadership of Gov. and Mrs. Chiles and Charles Mahan,” who was then USF College of Public Health dean.  Marked improvement in the state’s infant mortality rate was among the leading factors, along with the Center’s performance the previous two years as a Type IV center.

Mahan had envisioned a research, program and policy institute for maternal and infant health as early as 1988, according to the Center’s official timeline.  The Center’s originally intended location was the University of Florida, Mahan said, but that was before the state had established its first college of public health at USF.  By the time the Center was created a few years later, USF, with the only COPH in the state, had become the obvious location, and Mahan had been named COPH dean.

Charles Mahan, MD, former USF College of Public Health dean

“Gov. and Mrs. Chiles had a lot of allegiance to the University of Florida, where they met and where he got his law degree,” Mahan said.  “I was state health officer on loan from the medical school at Florida, and I was supposed to go back there, and the Chiles Center was supposed to be there.”

But having served in the same administration, Mahan was friends with Betty Castor, who had been state secretary of education under Chiles and had since become president of USF.  Mahan said she called him and personally asked him to be the dean of COPH.  He accepted, and the first “steal” from the University of Florida only naturally led to the second.

USF was the better location for the Chiles Center, Castor told the governor, as it had the only college of public health and was headed by a dean who had served him as state health officer.  It also had a Healthy Beginnings program in place that arguably was already doing some of the work the Chiles Center would do.

Dr. Betty Castor, former USF president and Florida secretary of education.  To her left is her husband, former Florida state Rep. Samuel P. Bell III.

The Florida Healthy Start Program had been created by the legislature in 1991, under the urging of Chiles, and from its inception, had included a Healthy Beginnings Program at USF.  So when Mahan was appointed COPH dean in February 1995, he was at the right place at the right time to begin realization of his vision.  A year later, the Board of Regents established the Center, and Mahan served as its founding director in addition to his duties as COPH dean.

A $2-million federal grant followed in 1997 that was specifically aimed at reducing infant mortality in Hillsborough County.  In December of that year, a gala event at Busch Gardens honored the governor and his wife and formally launched the Center.  Additional state funding came in 1998 for construction of a building and a $600,000 annual operating budget.

Former Florida first lady Rhea Chiles (third from right) and her and the late governor’s daughter, also named Rhea (fourth from right), and son Ed (center) at the Chiles Center’s groundbreaking ceremony.

“President Castor invited Gov. and Mrs. Chiles down to USF, and we toured the campus and got them to put their names on the Chiles Center,” Mahan recalled.  “And then, Gov. Chiles was great about taking me to Washington and meeting all the senators who were his friends and raising money for the building.”

That journey for federal support brought home another $800,000 for the building.  The governor and first lady then spearheaded a series of fundraisers in Daytona Beach, Lakeland, Pensacola, Tallahassee and West Palm Beach.

“The Center was originally housed in office space near Tampa International Airport on Mariner Drive,” recalled Dr. Linda A. Detman, research associate for the Center.  “I believe that was from 1996 to 1998.  The Center’s first on-campus location was in FMHI, what is now labeled on maps as the College of Behavioral & Community Sciences building.  We also had a pair of temporary trailers for added office space between FMHI and the Westside Conference Center.”

Gov. Lawton Chiles (right) and daughter Rhea with Dr. Harold Varmus, then director of the National Institutes of Health, at the dedication of Lawton Chiles House (not related to the Chiles Center).

The Center’s impressive home since 2001 puts plenty of inspiration on display for visitors and staff alike:  A photo gallery of Gov. and Mrs. Chiles, including framed moments with presidents Clinton, Carter and Bush the first; a replica of the governor’s Tallahassee conference room for his use whenever he visited; even a bronzed pair of “Walkin’ Lawton’s” famous shoes.

After all, inspiration is what it’s all about.  Over the years, the Chiles Center’s health care initiatives have racked up impressive victories, to say the least.

“At the Chiles Center, Florida Covering Kids and Families and its collaborators across the state exceeded the federal goal for Florida in enrolling people for health care coverage in the federal health insurance marketplaces,” said Dr. William M. Sappenfield, Chiles Center director and Department of Community and Family Health chair and professor.  “During the first open enrollment, about 500,000 more individuals enrolled over the initial target and reached more than 1.6 million after the second enrollment period.  Moreover, because of the success of projects like this, Florida now enrolls more people through this important health insurance program than any other state.”

William M. Sappenfield, MD, MPH, director of the Chiles Center

Sappenfield also points to one of the Center’s most recent projects, the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative, which has radically reduced elective early deliveries (before 39 weeks of gestation).

“Babies electively delivered before 39 weeks are at higher risk of poor outcomes, including respiratory troubles and difficulties feeding, and are at higher risk of learning, behavioral and school-related problems in childhood,” explained Detman, who oversees the project.

“It continues to make a measurable difference in the quality of health care that mothers and babies are receiving,” Sappenfield said, “through improving newborn health care at birth and reducing death and morbidity to obstetric hemorrhage.”

Another recent Chiles Center project is the Obstetric Hemorrhage Initiative begun in October 2013 with 31 Florida and four North Carolina hospitals.  The participating Florida hospitals represent more than one-forth of the state’s delivery hospitals and nearly two-thirds of all births statewide, Detman said, adding that maternal deaths from postpartum hemorrhage are the leading cause of maternal mortality in the state.

Linda Detman, PhD, program manager for the Chiles Center’s Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative

“We are fortunate to have the enthusiasm and dedication of perinatal professionals across the state who want to be engaged in improving outcomes for mothers and infants, and we plan to grow in the number of hospitals actively engaged in one or more of our projects,” she said.

Though funding issues put an end to the Center’s branch office in Tallahassee years ago, the original main office – now an imposing office building – on the USF Tampa campus continues to thrive and achieve.

“As was initially dreamed, the Chiles Center continues to improve the health and health care of women, children and families in Florida,” Sappenfield said.  “We will continue to build upon and expand these successful collaborations to succeed in our mission of improving their health and health care.”

Gov. Chiles visits COPH and its dean, Dr. Charles Mahan, in 1995.

“We worked with Gov. and Mrs. Chiles for many years to devise and implement programs and ideas to improve the pregnancy outcomes for women and babies,” Mahan said.  “The LRCC is designed to carry out these efforts and continue to design and improve new ones for future generations.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.

The post Chiles Center promotes health for all women and babies appeared first on College of Public Health News.

First published on June 1, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Dr. Carol Bryant was on the ground floor of the USF College of Public Health’s social marketing program when the social marketing field was in its infancy.  She credits Dr. Stan Graven, chair of the Department of Community and Family Health at the time, for the idea of a social marketing conference.

“He asked me to start a conference,” Bryant said.  “He said, ‘I think the field of social marketing has enough popularity and potential.  We need a conference on it.’”

Dr. Carol Bryant

Bryant, now USF Distinguished Health Professor in Community and Family Health, believes Graven’s own conference had convinced him of the viability of conferences in general, and specifically their ability to facilitate broad networking among stakeholders in any given field.

“It’s had a really major impact on his field,” Bryant said of what has become known as the Gravens conference, “so he could see that a conference in social marketing might be able to do the same thing.  He realized that a national conference could bring people together, disseminate the ideas, make a significant contribution to the public health community, and probably be good for branding USF.”

Bryant assented despite never having done anything of the kind or having any real idea of how to go about it.

She enlisted the help of Judy Sommers, who was at that time in charge of organizing COPH events.  She traveled to the nation’s capital to consult with two people at CDC who were well known in social marketing to ask whom to invite to speak.  She even began to think that putting a conference together might not be so difficult, after all.

“We had a really dynamic lineup of all the really active social marketers in the United States,” she said.  “We paid them all for their travel and a pretty good honorarium to come.  We promoted the conference, and we had 71 people.”

So far, so good.  There was just one problem.

“Forty or 50 of them were speakers,” she recalled, “so we lost a bundle of money.”

Bryant concluded then that the inaugural social marketing conference would also be the last, but she had a believer in Graven.

“Stan had the vision and courage to say, ‘Nope, we’re going to do it again.  Only this time, we’re not going to lose money, so let’s see how we can cut back on the budget and do better promotion.’”

Flanked by a cadre of congratulatory colleagues, Bryant (center) received a special recognition they presented her at the 2014 Social Marketing Conference.

The result was a second conference that turned the tide.  Smaller honoraria and fewer speakers fixed the early financial faux pas, along with the discovery within a few years that the honoraria could be dropped altogether.  There was enough interest in social marketing and enough respect for the conference that speakers would pay their own way to take part, and holding it at a beachfront resort didn’t hurt.

“Stan was absolutely right,” Bryant said.  “The conference would take the approach of social marketing and disseminate it in a way we couldn’t just through publications and my flying around and talking about it.”

Still, she said, social marketing’s early days at USF were lean at best.

“The early days were real tough financially,” she said.  “I was pretty terrified, actually, about how to do something like this.  Fortunately, we had good people – first Judy Sommers and then Ginger Phillips, and now Bobbi Rose – to do all the conference planning, but I didn’t realize I could just sit back and let them do that.  In the first years, I felt like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I have to learn how to do this.’”

In those early years, the Social Marketing Conference, the first of its kind anywhere, was pretty much the extent of social marketing, said Bryant, who also co-directs the Florida Prevention Research Center, a CDC-funded entity that develops and evaluates a community-based approach to social marketing.

“We did not have what we came to call the training academy yet, or the field school,” she said.  “I think I was teaching an Introduction to Social Marketing course at that time.”

Persistence pays

Bryant’s long-time social marketing partner is also her long-time partner in the bigger sense, her husband, James Lindenberger, director and faculty administrator of the Social Marketing Group.  When social marketing was launched at COPH, Lindenberger was not yet at USF, but was nonetheless a major catalyst in the start of social marketing at the university.  Together, he and Bryant founded Best Start Social Marketing, a nonprofit marketing agency with an innately symbiotic relationship with social marketing at USF.  Lindenberger was its executive director for its first 15 years.  He also is founder and former publisher of Social Marketing Quarterly, the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to social marketing.

James Lindenberger

“Much of the work that we did, whether at our agency or at USF, was really done collaboratively between the two,” Lindenberger recalled.  While agreeing that the Social Marketing Conference drove at least the USF entry into the field, and probably more, he shared Bryant’s recollection of a shaky start.

“It was the first conference we’d ever put on,” he said.  “We didn’t know what we were doing, exactly, but we did have a lot of people who were instrumental in the field of social marketing, which was still a very young discipline.  We had a lot of what we thought were the important folks in the field do the presentations.”

One of those people, Lindenberger said, was Alan Andreasen, now a marketing professor at Georgetown University and executive director of the Social Marketing Institute.

“We asked him to be the closing speaker and add an exclamation point to the conference,” Lindenberger said.  “So, after a day-and-a-half of presentations, Alan got up and said, ‘Well, I want to tell you all that none of you know what social marketing is.  You’re completely wrong.’  He then proceeded to spend about 35 or 40 minutes telling us how much we had messed up.”

Lindenberger and Bryant at the recent COPH Alumni Awards

Bryant and Lindenberger laughed heartily as they recalled the incident, but said they were far from finding it amusing at the time.

“We were furious.  You left the room,” Lindenberger said, nodding to Bryant, who agreed.

“I got up,” she said, “and was just pacing in the hallway thinking, ‘I can’t take this.’”

“We were really furious,” Lindenberger continued, “because this is a guy who was really important, and a lot of people looked to him, and we wanted him to come in and say, ‘Bless you.  Thank you for doing this.  Nobody else has done it before.  We appreciate it.’  Instead, he got up and basically said, ‘You idiots.’

“After a few weeks of us getting through this, it dawned on us that he was right.  His concern was that we had had almost all communications presentations.  Almost everything we talked about was promotion.  He said, ‘That’s not what we’re about.  We aren’t advertisers, we’re marketers, and marketers do a complete and holistic look at solving problems and apply those different variables to the solutions.’”

What resulted, Lindenberger said, was a dramatic redesign of the conference for the following year.

Holding a conference at a seaside resort is a good thing, as the faces of Social Marketing Conference attendees show.

“It’s been interesting,” Bryant noted.  “That mistake was made by almost everyone we invited.  They showed off all their promotional materials and were very proud to do so, and we still have trouble with trying to make sure people don’t do that, and that our audience understands that it isn’t just advertising.

“It’s very humbling that people can sit there for two days having us tell them that maybe 20 times and still try to hire us to do TV ads.  I think it’s because most people think marketing is advertising.  It’s a hard misunderstanding to correct.”

In fact, both said the term “social marketing” has long been problematic.  Technology, it might seem, is doing all it can to keep it that way.

“It’s interesting,” Bryant said.  “It’s changed from ‘Don’t call it that, because marketing is evil’ or ‘Don’t call it social marketing, because that’s social engineering.’  Now, it’s a different debate.”

“A lot of the debate,” Lindenberger said, “seems to be rooted in younger folks coming into the field who do want to be social marketers, but when they present themselves as social marketers to their peers, their bosses or their clients, those people misinterpret that to mean social media and social media marketing.  Their concern is that it’s diminishing their ability to have an impact and also diminishing their ability to have a successful career.”

“For many of us who are kind of the old guard on this,” he continued, “our belief is there’s just so much brand equity built into it.  There’s a huge array of publications and organizations and conferences that are built around social marketing.  We would have another 30 years of building the brand up.”

“But we already have lost a lot of brand equity,” Bryant countered.  “If you Google ‘social marketing,’ you’ll get social media, even social media marketing conferences.  It is a real problem.

“In the U.S. public health system, and certainly within anthropology, it was seen as advertising and manipulation,” added Bryant, an anthropologist by training.  “I had anthropology friends who just thought I had gone totally to the dark side, but public health had a real misunderstanding about it, too, until people like Marsha Walker in Texas got it right and funded a really successful program.  That program was so successful that soon, the other agencies were asking us to do projects for them.  So, as they saw it work in this country, people in public health went, ‘Wait a minute.  Whatever it’s called, this might work for us.”

“I think what happened here at USF is a very significant part of why the discipline grew as rapidly and as successfully as it did,” Lindenberger said.  “A national program that we did out of USF and Best Start was the national breastfeeding promotion campaign for the Department of Agriculture.  That became their national brand.  It’s been used in every state in the country, is still being used, and that really brought social marketing to the foreground in Washington in a way domestically that it had never been before.”

Throw me a line

That early show of strength by the program also was a very early sign of things to come for the field, “upstream” social marketing, an approach that wouldn’t have a name for many years.

“Downstream is basically going to the individual or small group to influence their behaviors to be more positive in a particular issue, health issue or whatever it may be,” Lindenberger explained.  “Upstream is trying to look at the environment, decision-makers and the other factors that actually create a situation in which people can make change more effectively and more usefully.”

“All these people are drowning in the river downstream,” Bryant offered by way of the prevailing example in the field.  “So, you throw them educational pamphlets on how to swim or pull them out one at a time.  But upstream says, ‘No, let’s find out where they’re coming from.  Is there a bridge that’s broken?  Is something giving way?  Let’s go up there and keep them getting into the river in the beginning, instead of one by one educating them on how to survive.’  It’s a powerful metaphor, and it is catching on.”

Lindenberger noted that early applications of upstream social marketing significantly predate the metaphor.  While the national breastfeeding campaign was being developed in 1989, he said, Bryant and a pair of colleagues went to Capitol Hill and lobbied Congress for funding.

Social marketing at work at the Social Marketing Conference

“It had never been done before,” Lindenberger said, “and after that lobbying effort, $8-million was set aside specifically for breastfeeding promotion and management to be dispersed throughout the country in the WIC program.  That was upstream.  The very first project we ever did was as upstream as it gets.”

Bryant credits Andreasen for helping to widely disseminate the metaphoric term – source unknown – that has become a directional imperative for social marketing over the past decade, as well as numerous others for driving it forward.

“Many speakers at our conference, Bill Smith and Gerard Hastings from Scotland, especially, brought that metaphor alive for us and nudged us to go more upstream,” Bryant said, “and then our critics like Larry Wallach were saying the same thing,” which was that the downstream approach was blaming the victims, chiding them for not knowing how to swim well enough to save themselves.

“All those forces came together at the same time, and public health had the same realization.  We said, ‘Wait a minute.  We’d be really stupid to keep going downstream.  Let’s come up with a model that takes social marketing upstream,’ so that’s what we’ve done for the last 10 years – develop the model and test it out, and now, we’re training people in it.

“I’m hoping it will really take off.  It is more difficult to get funding, but it is more sustainable, too.”

This year, social marketing at USF COPH added to its impressive list of accolades the nation’s first MPH with a social marketing concentration.  Last year, the program celebrated the revision and re-launch of its social marketing training web site in conjunction with the Florida Prevention Research Center.  There is excitement over the field’s burgeoning relationships with other disciplines, namely engineering (humanitarian engineers) and a long-standing but still growing symbiosis with anthropology.  There also is that strengthening upstream trend.

Which way do we go?

But with all its successes, expansion, diversification and partnering, social marketing nonetheless remains a relatively new field in a time when a digital communications explosion can threaten to turn almost anything into a shape-shifter.  While few would argue that 44 successful years likely points toward anything less than a positive future, identifying potential threats can hardly be seen as unwise.

So, just where is social marketing headed?  In arguably its adolescence, what will it look like fully grown?  Who better to ask than two people who have nurtured it from infancy?

“I see a lot of dangers ahead,” Bryant said, “the big one being the brand equity diminishing because of confusion with social media marketing, and I’m not sure where I stand on the argument.  But I’m at this point kind of leaning toward maybe we do change our name, or do a qualification to it, ‘social marketing for behavior change,’ or something like that to help clarify that we’re not social media.

“Like anything, it peaks and then it falls,” she said, “and I resisted doing an MPH in social marketing, because I was afraid it was just an approach and its popularity might wane, and people with that degree – other people wouldn’t even know what they did.  I think those are some dangers that are real, but there are now so many people active in the field around the world.  We have two list serves, two journals, two conferences, and we’re thousands strong instead of just a hundred, so I think those fears are probably not warranted.”

“I agree with that,” Lindenberger offered.  “They’re not warranted.  We differ over the name issue and social media marketing.  I’m fairly comfortable with the fact that people sometimes get confused, and we can help them learn more about it if we have the chance to engage them.  And I also don’t really care.  I think we and other social marketers continue to do what we do, and if we do it well, if we produce the product successfully and deliver something to their audiences that they really need and want that will help them accomplish their own missions, then we’re fine.”

After discussing the future they anticipate for social marketing, it was time to consider the one they’d like to see.

A student poster presentation at the conference

“Something I think will happen – we’re already seeing it – that I would like more of is social marketing moving out of public health,” Bryant said.  “I think our conference taught people in public health how to apply social marketing.  Only more recently have we attracted people from other fields and changed our name from Social Marketing in Public Health to just Social Marketing Conference.

“It since then has also taken off in environmental protection.  A man named Doug McKenzie Moore, who’s a good trainer and has a wonderful web site and a list serve, has really spread it around the world for people who are working in recycling and all kinds of things.  We’re working with Qatar now to do the same thing in transportation.  Some social marketers want to see it in finance helping people to manage their finances better.

“So, what I’m hoping happens is it really does move out of just public health applications, because it could work so well in other arenas.  Healthy People 2020 has a set of objectives related to social marketing, and they want to see, by 2020, more health departments using social marketing.  I’d like to see state health departments really use it.  And the other set of objectives in Healthy People 2020 is that all schools of public health will offer at least a course in social marketing.”

“I’d like to see it be a degree program in a lot of universities around the country,” Lindenberger said.  “I think that would be a way for this to really take off – that people see it as a legitimate credential that helps them get jobs and provides them with tools to be able to influence positive change.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.

The post Pioneers of social marketing discuss its founding and its future appeared first on College of Public Health News.

First published on May 8, 2020 in observance of the COPH’s 35^th anniversary celebration.

The Sunshine Education and Research Center (Sunshine ERC) located in the USF College of Public Health is one of 18 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) education and research centers across the nation that provides interdisciplinary training of occupational safety and health professionals.

The Sunshine ERC, which was founded in 1997, offers programs collaboratively with the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, and Arts and Sciences and focuses on evidence-based practice and research, continuing education and outreach.

“Over the years this continuing education program evolved into a vehicle to provide low cost opportunities for professional development,” said Dr. Thomas E. Bernard, USF College of Public Health professor and Sunshine ERC center director. “The scope of the center also increased with pilot project research training and more opportunities for interdisciplinary activities.”

According to Bernard, USF COPH’s Drs. Yehia Hammad, Stuart Brooks and Pete Rentos had a vision for starting a NIOSH-supported education and research center that would be the first new center in a decade.

“As funded, the Sunshine ERC was the umbrella for industrial hygiene, occupational medicine and occupational health nursing with a nascent continuing education program. We then added occupational safety and occupational health psychology (OHP)­­—the first ERC to have an OHP program,” he said.

Bernard and Dr. Candance Burns of the College of Nursing, assumed leadership of the Sunshine ERC in 2008.

According to Bernard, with growing support from NIOSH, the Sunshine ERC affiliated with the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), expanded interdisciplinary activities and enhanced outreach into underserved populations.

“This momentum carried us into the current funding cycle with the addition of UCF to support research training directed at the hospitality industry, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a new vision of occupational safety, and programs with UPR in disaster resilience for workers. Further, we now have a supported online program in health, safety and environment,” Bernard said.

The Sunshine ERC focuses on providing training that reflects the needs of key industries in Florida and emerging issues of the nation.

“Students in the Sunshine ERC receive solid training in their chosen field,” Bernard said. “The real value-added is further experience in interdisciplinary activities to better prepare them for the practice of occupational health, safety and wellness.”

Trainees spend time with peers from across disciplines in public health, nursing, and medicine at USF, psychology at USF and UCF, hospitality at UCF, and aviation at Embry-Riddle, according to Bernard.

“Each trainee is enrolled in a degree program within their institution,” Bernard said. “It is the interdisciplinary experience that takes them beyond their specific discipline.”

For example, Bernard explained, trainees are expected to attend one ERC-wide session that provides information of interest to all.

“This varies a little and includes responsible conduct of research, general principles of occupational health, safety and wellness, and team building exercises,” he said.

Trainees are also encouraged to attend national symposiums and also contribute and participate in research projects sponsored by the ERC and its faculty.

Zach Brandes-Powell, a second year occupational exposure science student in the COPH, said the Sunshine ERC has expanded his experience level as a student. 

“The mentoring and encouragement of the professors and members of the ERC have helped to push me to do things I wouldn’t have thought I was capable of with my current level of experience,” he said.  “For example, through the ERC’s support, I was able to co-present on the benefit of internships for occupational safety and health students and professionals at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition (AIHCE). With their encouragement, I also started to offer to tutor students taking industrial hygiene related courses. These opportunities have helped me to develop skills that will be beneficial to me in life and throughout my career in occupational safety and industrial hygiene.”

Brandes-Powell said going to AIHCE 2019 has been a highlight for him.

“We were able to meet students from ERCs around the country and interact with alumni of the program. The impact that the ERC has on its students was evident as the current students instantly found common ground with the alumni when talking about our courses and projects,” he said.

Miriam Escobar, also a second-year occupational exposure science student in the COPH, said the Sunshine ERC has helped her expand her networking abilities with professionals from other disciplines.  

“Now, I am part of a diversified professional network with a common goal to improve the safety and health of others in various occupational industries,” she said.

She said the highlight of her experience so far has been the ability to participate in the Puerto Rico Resiliency focus group research.

“I was able to travel to Puerto Rico and hear first hand how the hospitality community was not only affected by hurricane Maria but also come together and prevail,” Escobar said.

Currently, the Sunshine ERC is supporting four COVID-19 research projects through its program development fund, according to Bernard, three at USF and one at UCF.

Bernard said that while the Sunshine ERC focuses on students within the ERC disciplines, they have started to also engage students and faculty interested in disaster management.

“If students have an interest they should contact me or Ms. Kelly Freedman and we will see if there is an opportunity with current projects,” he said. “We would welcome and support expenses for some students outside the ERC to participate in interdisciplinary activities.”

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

The post Sunshine ERC provides students cross-discipline collaboration appeared first on College of Public Health News.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and about one in four people in the United States has some type of disability according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As many as 80% of disabled individuals have invisible disabilities that can include ADHD, learning disabilities, psychological conditions or mental health concerns.

These statistics also apply across college campuses, where students are preparing to enter the workforce amid learning environments where accessibility has become a more routine aspect of the classroom.

“Students arriving at college campuses now have grown up with the idea of inclusion,” said Deborah McCarthy, director of USF’s Office of Student Accessibility Services (SAS). “They’re used to the reality that someone in a wheelchair was in their kindergarten class, or that someone with autism was in their math class. They view accessibility as a communal responsibility and are eager to be proactive. This new viewpoint creates an exciting opportunity.”

And yet, many students with disabilities still do not seek help for various reasons, including stigma. That represents a complex challenge for student accessibility leaders like McCarthy.

Below are some ways USF works to support student accessibility, reduce stigma, raise awareness of available resources and empower individuals with disabilities to share their experiences and concerns.

Student Accessibility Services

McCarthy’s office serves approximately 3,100 students across the three USF campuses—around five times the number it served in 2009—and provides them with services and support from enrollment through graduation.

SAS works with faculty to accommodate students through Universal Design for Learning, a framework meant to ensure that course materials and activities are accessible and inclusive for all students, regardless of their abilities, backgrounds or preferred learning styles.

This can include providing accessible textbooks, Braille, American Sign Language interpreters, extended time testing, note-taking technologies and transcription services.

When the COVID-19 pandemic sent colleges online in 2020, the shift to platforms like Microsoft Teams to connect faculty, staff and students brought unexpected benefits, such as improved captioning for students with hearing impairments.

McCarthy said the pandemic sped up efforts at USF and across the nation to increase the use of technology that supports accessibility and helped people think about what an in-person university means and what accommodations still need to be made.

SAS also serves as a resource for the broader campus community with a goal of promoting an environment where accessibility and Universal Design are central to the USF experience.

“Disability advocate Alice Wong points out that accessibility is really about hospitality,” McCarthy said. “You don’t invite someone into your home for dinner if you’re not sure they can get into your house. It’s not just ramps and curb cuts. It’s about what it means to be hospitable.”

SAS encourages all students, faculty and staff to participate in AccessiBull, a series of disability awareness events to help educate the USF community and reduce stigma. The office also annually administers the Johnson Scholarship for Students with Disabilities to provide financial support.

Presidential Advisory Committee on Accessibility

Formed in 2021, the USF Presidential Advisory Committee on Accessibility is chaired by McCarthy and advises President Rhea Law on matters pertaining to ability, accessibility and disability for faculty, staff and students.

The advisory committee also evaluates and monitors the university environment for related problems and issues, and it’s a way for multiple areas of USF to come together to embrace accessibility.

Since its inception, the committee has partnered with USF’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning to enhance accessibility and training for online courses and faculty trainings.

The committee co-sponsored USF’s second annual production of “This is My Brave,” a student performance about mental health and disability, and is focusing on updates to USF’s Americans with Disabilities Act policies.

Employment Support

SAS and partners like USF’s Center for Career & Professional Development offer a variety of resources to assist students with employment opportunities.

Information about the U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Recruitment Program is available through the SAS website. The program, managed by the Labor Department’s Office of Disability Employment Policy and the U.S. Department of Defense, connects employers with postsecondary students and recent graduates with disabilities. The apply date is Oct. 12.

The USF Center for Career & Professional Development offers articles and videos sharing tips and advice for students with disabilities who are entering the workforce, as well as resources such as career coaching and, on USF’s Tampa campus, 15-minute drop-in visits for students to answer basic career-related questions.

Recent campus career fairs offered a half-hour exclusive time slot with access limited to students needing accommodation so they could navigate the fair without crowds and with minimal sensory overload.

Student Government Accessibility Task Force

Last year, USF students Simone Till and Kevin Moore urged student government leaders to create a Campus Accessibility Task Force. Their intent was to enhance the disability culture at USF by raising awareness and empowering students.

Till and Moore spearheaded the creation of a survey last fall asking students to share their experiences and concerns and received 182 responses. The findings will help student government look for ways to guide more students toward resources available through SAS and advocate for increased support for disabled individuals.

Till arrived at USF three years ago with an acute understanding of the challenges facing students with disabilities. She experienced hearing loss during her childhood that eventually led to her use of hearing aids.

Because of her long hair, Till’s hearing aids aren’t readily visible. Her sister, however, has cerebral palsy, causing speech and mobility challenges that make her disability more apparent.

“Growing up helped me understand that when you approach disabilities, it’s really a huge umbrella,” Till said. “You have to think about it from a very holistic standpoint.”

Jillian Heilman, the task force’s faculty advisor at the time, credited Till, Moore and other student government leaders for responding to what they saw and heard from peers and pushing to make the task force a reality.

“Students started to reach out to us,” said Heilman, an adjunct professor in the USF Rehabilitation Counseling and Disability Sciences Program who researches disability impact, advocacy and awareness. “It was a grassroots effort that solidified students’ need to be heard.”

Till and Moore graduated in May, and one of the students taking over leadership of the task force is Chrissy Zimmer, a College of Public Health graduate student who has utilized accessibility services because of a spinal condition.

Zimmer calls Heilman “a remarkable advocate,” and says McCarthy’s team at SAS has made “phenomenal improvements to its website,” including the addition of webinars and other resources.

She said the task force is planning another survey this fall. There are also plans to create a peer-to-peer mentoring platform and promote a greater student body presence at events focused on access and raising awareness.

“The task force would love to get students more involved and make them aware of services available to them, and to help able-bodied students learn how they can become allies,” Zimmer said. “These are small ways that we can ignite change.”

Story reposted from USF Newsroom

The post USF works to increase awareness, support for students with accessibility needs appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Fifteen teams of rising public health and community leaders from around the country have been selected to participate in the inaugural cohort of the Public Health Regenerative Leadership Synergy (PHEARLESS) initiative.

Supported by an investment of more than $8.5 million from The Kresge Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the de Beaumont Foundation, the PHEARLESS initiative integrates regenerative leadership education and experiential learning with innovative collaborative tools that will help public health and community leaders build the skills they need to co-create sustainable solutions that advance health equity and well-being for all.

As a holistic, strengths-based and adaptive approach to leadership, regenerative leadership focuses on creating positive change and restoring balance in complex living systems. By creating positive relationships and nurturing the interconnected elements within a system, regenerative leaders aim to generate outcomes that benefit everyone.

“PHEARLESS leaders know how to forge partnerships that result in community-led public health efforts on the ground,” said Monica Valdes Lupi, managing director of Kresge’s Health Program. “Authentic community engagement can improve the public’s health for generations to come.”

Each four-person team includes two rising public health leaders and two rising community leaders. Together, the cohort will form a network that will learn from one another and help create new models for community-led efforts to improve equitable health outcomes community-wide.

“Strong partnerships between government and community are necessary to achieve meaningful change and improve health outcomes. Through the PHEARLESS program, we look forward to facilitating and strengthening such partnerships in communities across the country, and I am excited to welcome our inaugural cohort,” said Brian C. Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation.

Through the 12-month PHEARLESS experience, comprising four learning modules and a culminating capstone activity, participants will develop the mindset and skills to transform systems, structures and policies, in partnership with community, toward a just and equitable future. Each four-person team will receive a $100,000 grant to support their activities.

The cohort includes teams from the following communities:

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Buffalo, New York
• Colorado City, Arizona
• Columbia, South Carolina
• Hillsborough, Florida
• Jackson County, Missouri
• Lee County, Mississippi
• Long Beach, California
• Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Mobile, Alabama
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Saint Johnsbury, Vermont
• San Francisco, California
• Seattle, Washington

The University of South Florida (USF) College of Public Health (COPH) and Muma College of Business (MCOB) co-lead the design and implementation of the training and technical assistance. The COPH also partners with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the Big Cities Health Coalition, and the National Association of County and City Officials as an interdisciplinary support network.

“Today’s complex community health issues require learning and acting together. PHEARLESS leaders will not only develop themselves as leaders but also work respectfully in partnership to inclusively engage the public, build civic muscle and create the conditions in which all can thrive,” said Dr. Marissa Levine, director of the COPH’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice.

Questions? Contact COPH-CLPHP@usf.edu

The post PHEARLESS inaugural cohorts announced appeared first on College of Public Health News.

The Federal Open Enrollment Period (OEP) to sign up for or change health insurance plans runs from Nov. 1, 2023, through Jan. 15, 2024. Navigators from Florida Covering Kids & Families (FL-CKF), housed within the USF College of Public Health, along with their community partners are poised to help consumers find health insurance plans that are right for them.

Florida Covering Kids & Families works collaboratively with Florida agencies and stakeholders to advocate and conduct outreach to ensure all Floridians have access to affordable healthcare coverage. It has seven contracted partners that serve all 67 counties in Florida and is funded by a multimillion-dollar, multi-year grant from the U.S. Health and Human Service Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

While the FL-CKF has no large-scale, in-person sign-up events scheduled in the community this year, Nikia Gates, program manager for the FL-CKF Navigator Project, said Navigators—specially trained individuals who help a consumer “navigate” the health insurance marketplace—are just a phone call away to answer questions and schedule in-person or virtual appointments.

“Florida Covering Kids & Families will provide education and support, offer referrals when applicable, and schedule appointments with a Navigator partner in the consumer’s area if needed,” Gates said. “We will also be providing technical support to the Affordable Care Act consortium of partners. Additionally, we will be contacting consumers via mail through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Marketplace Assistance Community (MAC) database.”

Navigators will also be out and about in the community.

Family Healthcare Foundation, a Tampa-based nonprofit that partners with FL-CKF and provides outreach and application assistance in publicly funded health care programs such as Florida KidCare, the Health Insurance Marketplace and local county health care programs, will have Navigators meeting with consumers on the phone and virtually. Tampa Bay Navigators will be at locations such as Tampa General, BayCare Health Systems hospitals, the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County Family Resource Centers and Feeding Tampa Bay’s Empowerment Centers.  

“Offering multiple options to meet with a Navigator at a variety of community and clinical settings truly ‘meets’ people where they are to help them navigate a complicated system of understanding what their health insurance options are,” Katie Roders Turner, executive director of Family Healthcare Foundation, said. “We assist anyone and encourage everyone to reach out to speak with us if they are looking for health insurance information. Navigators are always free and always confidential.”

Anyone exploring new health insurance options or needing to change an existing plan is urged to utilize the OEP.

“The OEP is open to everyone. Appointments are available virtually, over the phone, and in person,” Gates said. “Anyone needing assistance getting health coverage through the Marketplace can call Covering Florida at (877) 813-9115 or visit coveringflorida.org to book an appointment with a Navigator in their area. Consumers can also visit healthcare.gov to explore resources that will help make enrollment faster and easier. Resources are available to help consumers determine if they qualify for savings, making health care even more affordable.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

The post USF Navigators, partners, ready to assist during health insurance open enrollment period appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Hazard identification and assessment within the workplace are critical elements of an effective safety and health program. Luis Silva, our USF SafetyFlorida contributor for October, provides insight into the proper storage of oxygen cylinders, as pictured in the above photo.

What is wrong with this picture?

An oxygen cylinder is stored immediately next to a fuel-gas cylinder in the welding area.  There is one more problem.  Can you identify it?

Applicable OSHA regulation

1910.253(b)(4)(iii)

Oxygen cylinders in storage shall be separated from fuel-gas cylinders or combustible materials (especially oil or grease) at a minimum distance of 20 feet or by a noncombustible barrier at least 5 feet high having a fire-resistance rating of at least one-half hour.

Corrective actions required

Although it is preferable to separate oxygen cylinders from fuel-gas cylinders and combustible materials by twenty feet (6.10 meters) or more, it is acceptable to provide a barrier at least five feet (1.52 m) high and having a fire-resistance rating of at least 30 minutes. Note that a sheet metal partition is not an acceptable barrier. Have employees store the cylinders in the designated areas, even if empty. And for the additional problem you identified, compressed gas cylinders must have their valve caps in place when not in use.

In-house safety and health inspections

A system of regular in-house inspections of all work practices, equipment, work processes, and worker-safe behavior is an excellent tool to identify hazards, correct them in a timely manner, and, most importantly, prevent hazards and serious injuries. The effectiveness of regular self-inspections can improve with additional formal safety training and awareness training as new hazards are discovered. Communicating the results of inspections to employees and allowing the safety committee or safety team members to perform regular facility inspections is a valuable tool to increase employee participation and awareness.

For more information about workplace safety or to request SafetyFlorida Consultation Program services, please visit our website at www.usfsafetyflorida.com or call (866) 273-1105.

Luis Silva
Health Consultant, USF SafetyFlorida

The post What’s Wrong With This Picture? appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Many of us have been appointed to manage programs and teams. We have enough experience to know when our key performance indicators are lagging and adjustments are needed to meet the quarter, year, or function goal. Yes, we are managers, but are we leaders in our organization? What is the difference, and why is it paramount? Why is this important in safety culture? The answers to these questions may come from self-assessment and self-reflection.

Knowing there is a difference between a leader and a manager is essential. While there are many definitions and inspirational posts on these, it is important to know that one who manages is responsible for fulfilling specific organizational duties or goals. Managers may be appointed for long-term needs to run departments or divisions or short-term needs like finding solutions for an organization’s pressing need or an event. A leader is not always appointed. Leaders have the gift to influence those around them. For those of us with a military background, we have heard and been charged to ‘lead by example.’ Some of my favorite qualities of a leader are the ability to grow leaders, spread inspiration, and continuous learning.

OSHA defines safety culture as “the environment where the attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions of all workers are reflected in the health and safety of the workplace.” As safety and health managers, we are entrusted with laying the foundation to establish and maintain a healthy and safe work environment. We may already have proven practices to perform functions and manage programs. Still, we may be lacking in enabling an environment where the mindset of health and safety is a priority. Our prime responsibilities are met, but what happens during our time off? Is it time for us to move to a different role? We may need to scout around for someone to replace us or one we can entrust during our absence. Is your organization’s morale on the downward slope? Perhaps this is your opportunity to ignite enthusiasm and inspire those you manage or answer to. Is the workforce at different levels being utilized to their full potential? This may be your chance to engage and get to know the employees and find any special interests or backgrounds. There may be times when we need to switch out our managerial hats and wear leadership hats. Knowing when this switch is necessary for your organization’s safety and health culture can make impactful differences!

Here at USF SafetyFlorida, we have more than 150 years of combined occupational health and safety leadership experience spanning multiple industries. Our senior professionals are committed to helping you provide quality service and protecting your employees. Call us at (866) 273-1105 or visit www.usfsafetyflorida.com to learn more about how we can help improve your company’s safety culture.

Miriam F. Escobar, MSPH, CSP
Health Consultant, USF SafetyFlorida

The post Safety Culture: The Key to a Safe and Secure Workplace appeared first on College of Public Health News.