Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #111215

Nadia Thind, MPH¹, Geraldine Oliva, MD, MPH², Brianna Gass, MPH¹, and Judith A. Belfiori, MA, MPH¹. (1) Family Health Outcomes Project, Community and Family Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California Street Suite 365, San Francisco, CA 94118, (415) 476-7646, thindn@fcm.ucsf.edu, (2) Family Health Outcomes Project, Community and Family Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California Street Suite 365, San Francisco, CA 94118

The Family Health Outcomes Project (FHOP), a project within the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco provides ongoing training and technical assistance to the 61 local health jurisdictions (LHJs) in California through a cooperative agreement with the state Maternal, Child, Adolescent Health (MCAH) Branch. As part of an effort to assist LHJs in planning effective interventions, FHOP developed a series of trainings to enable participants to understand and implement evidence-based practice in planning and evaluating programs to address problems identified in their community needs assessments reports completed in June 2004. Between July 2004 and February 2005, FHOP developed curriculum focused on six priority problems identified in the LHJs' Needs Assessment Reports: overweight and obesity, low rates of breastfeeding, poor neonatal outcomes, perinatal substance abuse, high risk behavior in adolescents and childhood asthma. Experts with knowledge of and experience with “best practices”, in these areas were selected for the trainings. Speakers summarized peer-reviewed research on causal/risk factors and proven or promising interventions. Speakers were encouraged to bring materials, literature reviews and existing bibliographies to share with the participants. Participants were asked to incorporate information from the speakers' presentations into a formal problem analysis and then to identify potential interventions discussed in the presentations that were appropriate for the particular situation(s) in their communities. This presentation will discuss the rationale for selecting this training methodology, and the challenges presented in identifying experts, gathering data on evidence-based interventions and engaging LHJs' in a rational planning processes.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to

• Describe the benefits of evidence-based data in trainings and its advantages for the planning process
• Understand the importance of providing training and technical assistance for program planning and implementation

Keywords: Evidence Based Practice, Training

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.