From the Management Academy Director

Recently, I attended the UNC-Chapel Hill Minority Health Videoconference. The title for this year's event was Breaking the Cycle: Investigating the Intersection of Education Inequities and Health Disparities. The speakers were

1. Reginald Weaver, Past President, National Education Association;
2. Dina Castro, Scientist, UNC FPG Child Development Institute;
3. Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinquished Professor and DPH Program Director in Urban Health Hunter College of Health Sciences/City University of New York; and
4. Lillian Sparks, Executive Director, National Indian Education Association

Each presenter spoke of the connection between education and the public's health and they made recommendations for each field.

They spoke of the need for more training and the need for programs focused on school-based health clinics, mental health programs and services aimed at teens on sexuality and HIV transmission. What are you doing within your community to provide a stable lifestyle to produce successful and healthy students? Please share with us.

Life Planning... get real!

One of the great benefits of a management development program is that it helps you manage your life. Our Management Academy students regularly report that they see improvements first in their performance as a parent or as a spouse as a result of trying to develop themselves as managers. Planning skills, negotiation skills, dialog skills, measurement skills, teamwork skills-- they all transfer.

For some of us, work performance begins at home. Are you taking care of yourself? Are you asking for what you need? Are you having the good, real discussions with your life partner that insure you are fulfilled and whole, working on the priority issues and both pulling in the same direction? In other words, are you doing life planning?

Life plans put work plans into perspective. Karl Umble likes to say that the goal is less about balance and more about "harmony." And the skills are essentially the same for both: the ability to plan well and then push through to execution, to work the plan into existence.

As the skin horse says to the velveteen rabbit, it takes a lot of love and attention to go from a stuffed toy to being real. In this respect, the velveteen rabbit is in line with a long stretch of work on authentic leadership, the notion that leaders have to let their personality come through the role to be maximally effective. They have to be present and real.

Last word is this: congratulations Anne on your wedding-- great team!

-- Steve Orton

From the Management Academy Director

In addition to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, we have recently received other positive updates of plans that are being implemented and teams that are moving ahead to have an impact on their community.

The Gaston County Health Department, Gastonia, North Carolina, is preparing to break ground for their new Highland Health Center. The team participated in the Management Academy 2007-2008 cohort, along with their community partner, Gaston Family Health Services. They recently received $1.3 million thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The team members were Paula Black, Renee Clark, Veronica Feduniec, William (Bill) Gross, and Selenna Moss. The health department director is Colleen Bridger.

Also, we were contacted recently by a team from the Wilkes County Health Department, Wilkesboro, North Carolina. They participated in the Management Academy for Public Health in the 2008-2009 cohort, which just graduated in March, 2009. Their project focused on the issue of childhood obesity prevention for under-served Latino children. The program is a collaboration between the health department, the Wilkes Family YMCA, Wilkes Partnership for Children, and HOLA of Wilkes County. The program is known as "Y on Wheels" and is up and running. The team members were Melissa Black, Rose Marin, Donna Shumate and Judy West. The health director is Beth Lovette.

We look forward to having a new Management Academy for Public Health cohort starting August 2009 and we look forward to the opportunity to share the book, Public Health Business Planning: A Practical Guide with them.

Outcomes Story, South Carolina

I got a nice email from an alum a couple of weeks ago, Marie Horton from the South Carolina Dept of Health and Environmental Control, DHEC.

We were in the 2001-2002 group. Our project concerned training food establishment staff with the help of a video we produced on food safety. The video was based on our SCDHEC health inspector inspection sheet... The project was a success. I ended up pushing the video through to completion and we had it translated into Spanish and Mandarin a few years ago. The Environmental Health Division has it up on our SCDHEC website, if you want to take a look.

Here's a link to the "food protection" links page at DHEC. Note that DHEC staff partnered with the restaurant association to create and fund this video. This is all by way of background for what comes next:

The Environmental Health Division is working on a new product. They received grant money to produce a food defense video to prevent intentional food contamination. The planning meeting is next week and they have asked me to come and represent our Management Academy team. They want input on our experience in preparing our video.

Just wanted to share that with you. The work lives on!!!!!!!!!

I love the fact that this team implemented their plan. And I love the fact that their experience-- the specifics of what they did and the general lessons about business planning-- continue to bear fruit. Onward and upward!

-- Steve Orton