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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Gwen M. Willems, BA, MA, PhD Cand, Maternal and Child Health, Minnesota Department of Health, 85 East Seventh Place, Suite 500, P.O. Box 64882, St. Paul, MN 55164, (651) 646-8854, gwen.willems@health.state.mn.us and Nancy A. Blume, RN, PHN, MPH, Community and Systems Development, Minnesota Department of Health, 85 East Seventh Place, Suite 500, P.O. Box 64882, St. Paul, MN 55164.

Research in the field of infant brain development offers compelling evidence that the care children receive in their first years has long-lasting effects on how they develop, learn, and cope with stress. To encourage comprehensive service system integration and foster collaborative partnerships around early childhood health in the state, the Minnesota Department of Health is leading the Minnesota Early Childhood Comprehensive Screening Systems (MECCSS) initiative. An important component of MECCSS is an environmental scan that collects, sorts, and analyzes data; maps relationships between service providers; and clarifies opportunities and challenges. Through a checklist, components of the Convention on the Rights of the Child related to health and development can serve as guides against which to measure a state's conditions. Used in tandem, an environmental scan and checklist not only generate needs assessment data, but are also useful tools for generating an overall picture, in this case, of early childhood screening services in Minnesota by various health and education organizations, offering a template on which to build a statewide collaborative plan among the partners, and providing a picture of the protection of social justice and human rights of the child. This presentation will focus on generating data on the quality of early childhood systems and using data from a state environmental scan for a checklist on fulfillment of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a Minnesota example. Shared bibliographies will include literature on health issues of birth-to-five-year-olds, environmental scans, and evaluation checklists.

Learning Objectives: