|
|
 |
| |
 Introduction |
| |
| |
The Departmental commitment to the community is a theme that is woven throughout the majority of sponsored activities. These activities occur throughout the East End and the South Side sections of Pittsburgh, and represent the outgrowth of relationships established with faith-based and secular community organizations. Our theme is to never leave the community having taken something without giving something in return. All activities have a health focus, but positively influence the entire lives of those we serve. The outreach that has existed for many years will be expanded in the coming years and will continue to offer opportunities for faculty to mentor students.
|
| |
| |
to top |
|
|
| |
| Healthy Heart and Home |
| |
| |
The goal of the Healthy Heart and Home (H3) program is to provide community-based education to increase awareness, prevention, treatment, and/or the goal attainment in minority patients at risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) or CVD complications. Phase Ia includes screening, heart awareness, prevention, and education (SHAPE) to promote healthy heart awareness and education regarding cardiovascular risk factors, modification, and prevention. Phase Ib is designed to increase awareness of cardiovascular disease statistics and provide an efficient and effective model of community outreach to patients through clinician intervention. Phase IIa is the prevention portion of the program with its goal of empowering minority urban populations with knowledge regarding cardiovascular disease prevention. Phase IIb, optimization, empowers minority urban populations with knowledge regarding cardiovascular disease goal attainment/optimization through educational sessions, interventions, and resources. This program is sponsored by Pfizer, Inc.
|
| |
| Contact Information | Annamore Matambanadzo
Ph.D.
412-383-2377
matambanadzoam@upmc.edu
3518 Fifth Avenue,
Pittsburgh, PA 15232 |
| |
to top |
|
|
| |
| School Asthma Initiative |
| |
| |
The School Asthma Initiative is a comprehensive program designed to teach and support not only the children who suffer from it, but those who care for the children as well. Through teacher inservices about asthma, sessions for students with asthma, Asthma Awareness Days for an entire school, and formation of a School Asthma Initiative committee in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, we have been able to:
*Improve asthma management at school through the development of operating policies and procedures for management of children with asthma and provision of asthma medication and monitoring tools. Emergency care cards used by the school district were revised to include a checkbox for parents to indicate if a child has asthma.
*Enhance school performance and quality of life of students with asthma by educating students with asthma about their disease and appropriate management and building a support system among school personnel and peers for students with asthma. At Fort Pitt Elementary School, ambulance visits were reduced from 1/month to none for the entire year when we instituted our School Asthma Initiative.
*Demystify asthma in schools among students and personnel.
*Aside from the Emergency Care Card, all of our programming has been in schools participating in the UPMC St. Margaret Joint Health Partnership.
|
| |
| |
to top |
|
|
| |
| School Health - Career Connections High School |
| |
| |
UPMC St. Margaret fostered a new school health partnership with Career Connection High School, a charter school located in Lawrenceville. Together with Dr. Sauereisen, the UPMC St. Margaret family medicine residents conduct on-site physical examinations, sport physicals, and student health promotion and education programs.
|
| |
| |
to top |
|
|
| |
| PAYBACS Program |
| |
| |
PAYBACS is funded by the Grable Foundation. The Promoting Achievement of Youth—Bringing Athlete Career Success (PAYBACS) Program was envisioned through collaboration between Dr. Jeannette E. South-Paul and Anthony Griggs, Director of Player Development for the Pittsburgh Steelers. From two different perspectives, Dr. South-Paul and Mr. Griggs recognized a need to enrich the holistic development of high school athletes—the pipeline not only for professional sports, but also for productive citizens in our communities. Following more than 18 months of discussions among interested community, educational, and health care professionals, a program was designed to mentor a group of male and female athletes at Westinghouse High School.
Westinghouse High School is a co-educational institution with a rich history of educating minority youth in Pittsburgh within the Pittsburgh Public Schools. A number of special programs already exist within the school, but none that focused on mentoring athletes in order to promote academic success and personal health. Dr. Marilyn Barnett, the Principal of Westinghouse, was supportive of this program designed to: 1) increase healthy behaviors among program participants (e.g., no tobacco use, no alcohol use, no risky behaviors, improved nutrition, etc.); 2) encourage participants to have a career/vocational focus beyond athletics; and 3) provide participants with an opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to their communities.
Workshops were presented on a variety of topics including nutrition, personal health promotion, study skills and time management, peer pressure, leadership, and community involvement. Mentors were asked to supplement workshop content by sharing personal experiences and advice with students on an ongoing basis.
Taunya Tinsley serves as the Project Coordinator and recruited thirty participants from among 9th–12th grade student athlete members of Westinghouse High School’s football, baseball, basketball, volleyball, and rowing teams. Because the program was the vision of both Family Medicine and Steelers’ staff and the National Football Foundation’s Play It Smart program was housed in Westinghouse High School, the school serves as the targeted school for the pilot project. Additionally, Westinghouse High School served as the target school because the majority of the students that attend the school come from socio-economically challenged households in the Homewood-Brushton and East Liberty communities of Pittsburgh. In 2003–2004, there were 698 students enrolled at Westinghouse High School of which 99.4% of the students are African American.
Fifteen mentors for PAYBACS represented professional football players, physicians, and other health care professionals, scientists, business executives, educators, and community leaders. University of Pittsburgh faculty and medical trainees who were already active in Pittsburgh’s community outreach and sports medicine also were recruited to partner with students in the PAYBACS program. Mentors met with their ‘mentees’ frequently and maintained communication with them in between face-to-face meetings.
|
| |
| |
to top |
|
|
| |
| "Peacemakers: What the Aliens Saw" (St. Margaret) |
| |
| |
The Peacemaker Program is scheduled as a one-hour class in each 4th grade annually to coincide with Martin Luther King Day. Last year, four schools participated and in 2006, five schools will participate. It is a slide-based program contrasting violence (verbal and physical) and peaceable acts in homes, schools, and communities, nationally, internationally, and from “mother nature.” A script and several slide copies enable other presenters to teach, as did several residents. The program is presented from the perspective of alien observers, as one could not and should not use a deity as the “observer” in public schools. Hence, it is called “Peacemakers: What the Aliens Saw.”
The kids make a poster and each classroom has an internally selected winner, awarded a prize from the St. Margaret Foundation (usually a globe or an atlas). Selected posters are incorporated into the following year’s slides. The kids enjoy making the posters. The presenters (especially residents/students) are usually “shocked” by the number of kids who have witnessed gun violence or who have hidden to avoid gunfire, though it isn’t altogether surprising, given the number of homicides in our patient population. The teachers usually expand on what we present and encourage the kids to solve problems peacefully. The principals are enthused and insist that we continue the program year-to-year. It is updated annually according to current events that the kids can grasp; for example, new slides will include hurricane damage and people that rescued/sheltered others.
|
| |
| |
to top |
|
|
| |
| Center for Healthy Hearts and Souls |
| |
| |
The Centers for Healthy Hearts and Souls (CHHS), a community-based health initiative under the medical direction of Bruce Block, M.D., began as a result of a grant sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Insurance Plan. Over the last eight years, CHHS has become a self-sufficient, grant-supported 501[c]3 organization headed by Executive Director Mattie Woods. Staffing includes community organizers, registered nurses, public health professionals, and management and computing consultants. CHHS programs develop local African-American leadership in health promotion and intervention strategies, using the train-the-trainer model to build community capacity: over 70 paid community facilitators staff CHHS programs. Health promotion activities started in the East End of Pittsburgh, but now involve communities that include over 85,000 African-Americans throughout Allegheny County
Physicians at the UPMC Shadyside Family Health Center, East End Community Health Center, East Liberty Family Healthcare Center, Lincoln-Lemington Family Healthcare Center, and Alma-Illery Health Center have been working together with community groups and coalitions that care for indigent and homeless patients since the 1980s. Since 1998, these Centers have been working with CHHS to assure continuity between community health promotion and clinical care. In 2005, CHHS formed a partnership with Center for Minority Health’s the Healthy Black Family Project.
Health Ministries: In May of 1998, community organization efforts began to identify member churches and to develop and strengthen their health ministries. Each pastor and his church leadership group decide whether to sponsor a youth health corps, a smoking cessation program, and healthy lifestyles programs. Presently, 27 churches have centers, representing active congregations of over 18,000 people. Local ministries also run health fairs, conduct congregational surveys, invite speakers on health topics, evaluate program results, and collaborate in planning future programs.
Youth Health Corps: Presently, CHHS mentors twenty adolescents to enable them to function as Youth Health Educators. Information about fitness and nutrition as well as Tar Wars (Tobacco Resistance Education) and BUSTED programming has been provided to over five thousand neighborhood youth at churches, social service agencies, summer camps, schools, community organizations, and events. Over 75% of Youth Health Educators have entered college over the last six years. An early graduate from this program is now in her third year at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Smoking Cessation Groups: The first program was started in November 1998 after congregational facilitators were trained by a skilled community health nurse. The American Cancer Society's FreshStart Plus program, as modified by CHHS members, provides the basis for training and program implementation. The entire CHHS project participates in recruiting participants for the program. Quit rates generally exceed 35%. In addition to over 300 smokers in the East End, the programs have worked with hundreds of young women referred through Allegheny County’s Healthy Start perinatal outcome improvement program. The programs provide workshops and presentations that directly reach over 1,200 people a year.
Diabetes Support Group: The diabetes support program started in September 2000. Each group of 15 to 30 individuals meets every two weeks at local churches or community centers. Each of the six groups is led by the Diabetes Nurse and a lay Advocate with the assistance of the group’s Physician. A typical meeting includes a spiritual greeting, introduction and testimony of new members, sharing of action steps and new problems or questions, stretching and snack, topical presentation or video vignette, an educational handout, and spiritual message. Each group member is being trained to take better care of his/her own diabetes, that of a significant other, or his/her own risk status. We suggest that people replace the question "Why Me?" with the question "What Would God Have Me Learn from My Efforts to Live with Diabetes." Each group member has been chosen as a Diabetes Messenger and must therefore take responsibility for passing on information about achieving better health to their family and friends. Over 300 people with diabetes have participated in the program to date.
Fitness and Nutrition: The first Women’s Healthy Lifestyle program began in September of 1999. The American College of Sports Medicine model for fitness assessment was adopted originally and has since been modified for community use. The workout schedules were originally built on modern dance models which were modified for culturally-tailored Gospel music. A curriculum for a twelve-week education and workout program was drafted and has continued to guide the program. Consultation with the UPMC Shadyside Primary Care Institute and Sports Medicine Fellowship provides assurance of the highest medical standards.
Local community members with physical education, nutrition, and spiritual leadership backgrounds are recruited as group fitness instructors. Program fitness instructor trainers are AFAA (Aerobics and Fitness Association of America) -certified. They use video demonstrations; one-on-one training; continuing education workshops; and on-site observation to assure fitness instructors are competent. Fitness instructors also collect pre- and post test program data at program sites.
The fitness program is conducted in twelve-week intervals. Presently, six sites are running women’s healthy lifestyles fitness groups with 4,000 participants and 40,000 visits since 1999. These groups are operated five days a week at churches, community centers, and schools. Each Healthy Lifestyle session includes a sharing period, a nutrition discussion, fitness message, and one hour of low impact exercise (stretching and aerobic exercise) appropriate to age, sex, and fitness level. Using the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet as a model, the culturally tailored Healthy Lifestyle diet was created in 1999 for use in CHHS programs. Caloric modifications for obese participants to control weight gain during pregnancy and lose weight before and after pregnancy can be made easily with this eating plan.
Participants receive personal fitness evaluations of their BMI (Body Mass Index), waist-to-hip ratio, heart rate response to exercise, body composition, and blood pressure. In 2005, a newly choreographed program—specially-modified for sedentary diabetics, seniors, and overweight individuals—was introduced with great success.
|
| |
| Links |
|
Center For Healthy Hearts and Souls
|
| |
| |
to top |
|
|
| |
| The Birth Circle – Community Based Doula Program |
| |
| |
The Birth Circle
“Working with our community to build an integrated circle of care that addresses the needs of the childbearing family.”
Recently integrated into the Department of Family Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, the Birth Circle is a community-based program offering information and support to women and their families during pregnancy and childbirth.
Community Based Doula Program
The Birth Circle offers support to childbearing women and their families through its Community-Based Doula program, which has been serving Pittsburgh mothers since 2004. The word “doula” is an ancient Greek word, meaning “a woman who serves.” Today, the word doula refers to paraprofessionals who provide support to mothers before, during, and after giving birth. Doulas provide emotional support and encouragement, including physical comfort measures and individualized one-on-one education to women during pregnancy, throughout labor and birth, and during the newborn period. Birth Circle Doulas refer women to other needed social services, such as WIC and parenting support groups.
Doulas do not provide medical care. They are recognized by a national certifying body, DONA International (www.DONA.org ).
The use of doulas at birth is associated with a number of positive health outcomes, including fewer medical interventions; lower incidence of Caesarean section; reduced use of pain medications and epidurals; increased success at breastfeeding; higher patient satisfaction; and decreased postpartum depression.
The primary service model for doula practice in the U.S. is fee-based, with families paying privately for doula services. However, the Birth Circle is currently accepting clients for their no-cost doula services who have UPMC for You, UPMC for Kids, or UPMC for Life if they reside in, receive OB care in, and will deliver in Allegheny County. Please call for more information.
We offer mothers support tailored to their needs and unique challenges, and will meet with the mother at home, at a doctor’s appointment, or somewhere in the community to discuss pregnancy, nutrition, childbirth preparation, and birth planning. The doula will also provide continuous support during labor and birth, as well as at least one postpartum visit. While our expertise is in pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, we can also provide referrals to social service agencies as requested by our clients.
Wise Women Ambassador Program
The Birth Circle offers information through its Ambassador Program, started in 2001, as a means of opening a community dialogue about health and social concerns. The Ambassadors group meets monthly at an East Liberty church for a dinner meeting and presentation about a health or social concern. Attendance is open, and during the meeting women have the opportunity to learn about the issue, ask questions and take resources back to share in their community. In this way, they become “Wise Women” in their communities, who can share valuable health information.
For more information about services available through the Birth Circle, please contact the Birth Circle at:
Main Office: 412-441-3701
Fax: 412-441-3706
|
| |
| |
to top |
|
|
| |
| |
|
