- In our breakout sessions,
we are here back for our final talk
and we are excited to present
some of our health department colleagues here today.
Shari, I'm gonna introduce you
and then I understand you have a couple people with you,
I don't know if you wanna provide a brief introduction
and that way we can roll through
and give you as much time as possible.
So, Shari Levine is coming to us today,
she's extensive professional experience in communication
and writing for public and professional audience.
She works in the health, wellness and fitness industry,
she has experienced consulting with nonprofits
using program evaluation, editing, journalism
and creative writing.
She is a strong media and communications professional.
She, as far as education
have a master's in public health degree,
focused on health education and behavioral sciences
from Emory University,
presently she is working as the Information Director
for the Vermont Department of Health,
Division of Maternal and Child Health.
And from March, 2020 to September, 2021,
she served on the Vermont Department of Health,
COVID-19 Crisis in Emergency Response Team
in data assessment, message design
and evaluations to help inform our monitors of the risk
in the nature of COVID-19 and has many hats
in communications and we have worked with her
on several different campaigns,
and I'm really excited to have the ability
to turn the mic over,
and I will let you introduce your copresenters.
- Thanks, Michelle, if I knew you were gonna read that,
I would've written one sentence.
But thank you everyone for hanging in there,
and staying till the end of this,
we are so happy to be here.
I'm gonna be joined by two of my colleagues,
one is Jennifer Zoller.
She's the substance use information specialist
for the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs
or the ADAP division at the health department.
And as a special guest, we're having Janet Kilburn,
join us a little bit later to talk about Help Me Grow.
So now I hope this is okay with everyone,
I'm gonna turn off my camera,
'cause then I'm a much better presenter
when I'm not looking at myself.
So Jen, do you wanna start the slides?
Thanks.
Okay, so the 1 More Conversation Campaign
that was developed at the health department
in collaboration with clinicians from around the state,
was special thanks to Dr. Marge Meyer,
Dr. Shepherd and the ICON team for their participation.
Next slide please.
(clears throat)
Okay, for this campaign, we created resources
for both providers and patients to encourage and support
frequent conversations about substance use in pregnancy
and while breastfeeding,
and to help streamline the referral process
by promoting the statewide contact centers
that serve families in Vermont.
Next slide please.
In 2019, the health department put together a team
to address Vermont's high rates
of substance use in pregnancy.
At that time, we had just retired a campaign
that some of you may remember was called 049,
it was developed in Minnesota
and it was targeting clinicians
to address high rates of alcohol use during pregnancy.
049 did not prove to be effective,
so we started again from scratch building a new campaign.
First, we contracted with JSI,
to conduct a formative evaluation.
Some of you may have been part of this,
and we wanna thank you.
The evaluation identified that most providers in Vermont
were screaming for substance use
during the first prenatal visit, but not again, after that,
despite a need to continue the conversation
throughout pregnancy and postpartum.
There are many reasons for this,
as many of you know, including time constraints,
challenges talking about the topic
because of stigma and shame
and the fear of legal consequences.
And in the evaluation, clinicians also told us,
that they needed accurate patient education materials
that explained the risks of substance used,
and supported the message that there's no safe amount
during pregnancy or while breastfeeding.
Next slide, please.
We then worked with the marketing agency
to review the evaluation report
and identify the goals of this campaign.
We decided to create tools to support conversations
at each prenatal visit.
To address some of the barriers,
we acknowledge how difficult these conversations can be,
and address both the patient and providers concerns.
Again, Dr. Shepherd and members of the ICON team,
reviewed the patient education materials
and helped us modify the text, the content,
and remove any judgemental language.
Now I'm gonna hand it over to Jen,
and she'll talk about the provider resources.
- Thanks Shari.
Well, we created two different sets of materials
for this campaign.
The first set being four providers,
they are available on a provider specific website,
on the health department's webpage,
it's healthvermont.gov/1moreconversation.
On this page we have a description of the campaign,
as well as all of the available tools
that I'm gonna go over in detail, the next few slides.
But so folks know where they can find them,
there's one page that has everything listed.
So we developed this tip sheet for providers,
it has a brief description of the campaign
in the little overview section and then dives into some tips
for providers to have conversations with their patients,
we want to keep them really brief
and just mostly to be reminders of things,
to be mindful of, while having conversations
and to make it easy for folks to incorporate this,
into every visit as Shari mentioned before,
beyond just the initial visit with patients.
Each tip sheet also has a link to all of the available tools
to support providers in having these conversations.
(clears throat)
Excuse me.
And then a list of additional resources,
and those resources include screening tools,
research and reports to help support and inform providers,
again to have these conversations
regularly with their patients.
We also developed some screens for patient
or I'm sorry, for provider waiting room areas
or providers have screens in the actual exam rooms as well.
So they pose a couple of questions to patients,
to kind of get the thought process going that,
maybe they haven't considered this,
as part of their health and their journey through pregnancy
and breastfeeding.
So there are five slides that we develop
to kind of encourage patients to also initiate
and be open to these conversations
with their providers when they are in the exam room.
So these are all available on the website
as I mentioned for download,
so providers can use them as they see fit
and if are certain ones that they like that they can use,
they all are very simply designed to make them easy
to incorporate into provider kind of slideshows
that happen in the waiting rooms.
We also developed a few web banners,
these are available on the website as well for download.
They can be added to provider webpages
or other digital communications,
for example, newsletters or an email communications,
their small banners
that just get added to the communications
to have that extra level of encouragement
and having conversations with providers.
And now I'm gonna hand it back to Shari,
to talk about some of our patient resources.
- [Shari] Thanks, Jen.
We created fact sheets for patients
that address the most commonly used substances
during pregnancy in Vermont,
including alcohol, cannabis, opioids and tobacco.
The fact sheets also address
the most commonly asked questions
and again were reviewed by Dr. Shepherd and the ICON team.
This first one is the alcohol fact sheet.
I think I'm gonna run through these pretty quickly
so that you can see what they are,
and then you can come to the website
and read them more carefully.
Next slide, please.
Here's the cannabis fact sheet.
Next slide.
One for opioids here and next slide sheet, slide please.
This is our tobacco fact sheet.
In the next couple months we're gonna be reviewing
the content on these fact sheets, adding a QR code
and printing them out for distribution.
We'll also be printing out some posters
that will be sending to clinicians to hang in offices.
We'll get them laminated
to make sure that they will be lasting for a while.
Next slide, please.
We also created rack cards that can be put into settings
like your patient waiting rooms.
One of these is focused on pregnancy
and one of them is focused on conversations
during breastfeeding.
Now I'm gonna send this back over to Jen,
to talk about resources in Vermont.
- Thanks, Shari.
So beyond one more conversation,
we wanted to talk about the additional resources
we have available for providers and people who are pregnant
as it relates to substance use.
So the VT Helplink is an alcohol and drug support center,
this was launched in 2020, actually,
right after COVID,
it has been a resource for people to get information
on substance use disorder and treatment
and recovery services.
There's a lot of supportive language there,
as well as if you were to call or chat
with the call center staff for VT Helplink,
they also provide support and information
as well as referral to services.
So there are three ways that patients
and providers can interact with this service.
There's a phone number,
where you can reach a trained call center person
who will either speak to you or your patient
depending on how you'd like to have that set up
to walk through information and support
and then referral based on the services that they may need.
There's also an online chat option,
so folks can go on the website
and chat with a call center staff as well.
And then there's a page where folks can look up services
on their own.
So if you're more familiar with treatment and recovery
and maybe know more about what services you or your patients
may need, you can go directly to the inventory
and select a couple of filters,
try to get down to what you're looking for,
and it will provide direct information for those services
on phone numbers, emails when they're open,
things like that.
To support VT Helplink, we do have two posters
as well as a rack card available for providers
for their offices and waiting rooms.
Well, we're having, I think four more posters being created,
they are under development now
and will be printed soon for posting also,
so more to come with that one.
The other campaign I wanted to speak about is,
our Let's Talk Cannabis campaign.
This is our responsible use campaign,
so it, unlike one more conversation which has the...
There's no safe amount of substances kind of standing,
this campaign is really set for audiences
that might be current users that we wanna encourage
to not use during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
So the line there is, taking a break during that time,
but the campaign goes beyond that audience as well,
to talk to adults, parents and mentors, youth,
healthcare providers as well about cannabis use,
the health implications and really encouraging people
to make informed decisions and for youth to not use
for developmental reasons.
And that campaign, we have six fact sheets,
five of which are focused on a particular audience
and the sixth being a frequently asked questions fact sheet,
there's also a rack card available as well,
again for patient waiting rooms,
and these can be downloaded on the website
let'stalkcannabis.vt.com or available in print as well.
So those are two from alcohol and drug abuse programs,
I am now going to invite Janet Kilburn,
to come and speak about, Help Me Grow.
She is the Early Childhood Director
at the Health Department's Division for Maternal
and Child Health.
So I'm gonna and pass the button onto Jan.
- Thank you.
Good morning all and thank you for this opportunity
to share a little bit about Help Me Grow,
and how we're supporting the perinatal population,
new families, expectant parents in Vermont.
Next slide.
I think many of you know that Help Me Grow
offers a resource hub, we partner with Vermont 2-1-1
to have a comprehensive database of early childhood services
and supports and resources including basic need resources
for all families in Vermont,
and we have customized our database
with mental health services and supports.
And this is particular to perinatal mood
and anxiety disorder, but also substance use disorder
as well as trauma modalities, family/child therapy
and other evidence-based services in Vermont.
So our 2-1-1 database has 3,000, I think programs,
1,000 agencies at least and so we've gone above
and beyond that to enter individual clinicians
and they're training where they're located,
do they offer child health,
do they speak more than one language?
Do they offer evening therapy appointments
or support groups, birth classes,
all kinds of information that can really help families
and new moms, new parenting, pregnant people
connect to the service and resource that they need?
And not just, we don't just give a number,
we really call back and follow up with them,
and help them navigate that system of support
to make sure they're gonna get connected,
and then we follow after they're connected.
And one of the things we do,
because we know there's a mental health crisis in Vermont
and there's not enough clinicians,
and most of our referrals people really do want
that individual therapist.
We connect them with support groups
and these could even be like postpartum support,
international support groups and chat rooms
in the meantime or child health support group.
We have parents and babies in four regions in Vermont,
it's a wonderful clinician led kinda peer support group
for new families.
And so we really wanna support people with multiple services
and supports as well.
We also talk about basic needs,
we screen with using the hunger vital sign
for food insecurity.
So, a comprehensive menu of services and supports,
just wanted to be sure that all of you were aware of that,
and couldn't utilize us, right here, you can see,
you can refer directly to Help Me Grow on our website,
there's a downloadable referral form.
You can also call, dial 2-1-1 extension six
to get a Help Me Grow staff person or text us or email us.
And how about the next slide?
This is Danielle Delongis, probably many of you know her
and this is a great quote from her,
"Help Me Grow helps me care not just for the infants
in our practice, but also the whole family.
They help me connect families to services they might need
like rent, resources or child care, collaborative
and responsive, I appreciate knowing that the families'
needs are being addressed as well as their baby's health."
So again, that comprehensive menu of services,
and we also follow back with the referring provider,
so we communicate back to whoever refers to us,
whether it's a home visitor or a nurse man,
nurse practitioner or a practice physician.
Just to let them know what referrals we've made,
if the families got connected to what,
so that when they next see the family there in the loop
and they know and can also follow up
and check in with the family.
And that's it.
Next.
- So this was just a really quick overview of our work,
we work really closely with VT Helplink,
we are happy to hear feedback.
We want to hear from you, we wanna know how to make this,
the most helpful information and these campaigns
to be the most helpful for you and for your patients,
and please be in touch.
Next slide, please.
This has been a great honor to be here,
and I can't believe we've made it in the time.
So, fantastic back to Michelle, I think.
- I am also highly impressed that you squeezed
all of that information into such a short period of time,
and I do recommend everybody reach out to any of us,
to any of these wonderful colleagues
at the health department and to visit these websites
and take a look.
See what you think we're always open for feedback,
we're always looking for ideas and revisions,
and so we can't do that without your input.
So I am so excited to wrap up this conference today,
we have had great participation,
we've had wonderful speakers, this is exciting,
almost as exciting as doing it in person
and being able to network,
but I hope people will consider hopping on
in about 15 minutes.
If you haven't already registered
for the project scope series of webinars,
we have shared that in the chat
and again, it is a free service,
it is something you can hop on for this last session
if you haven't attended the other eight.
And if you're interested in that session at all,
and what we have done in the prior sessions
you can find all of the information and the recordings
from those didactics on the project scope Vermont website.
So without further ado, I think we will say good afternoon
and thank you to everyone for participating.
Of course we want everybody,
if you can to take that few minutes just to do our survey
for the evaluation of today's conference
and if you don't do it now,
we'll probably remind you via email anyway.
So, while it's fresh in your brain we'll have you do that,
and then we'll get everyone off to a nice lunch break
before the project scope series.
Thanks everyone.