National MCH Workforce Development Center meets with agency, community partners to plan improvements in health of NC’s children

January 28, 2016

More than 300 state and local public agency leaders and community partners gathered in Raleigh, N.C., on Jan. 6-7 to plan ways to improve the health of North Carolina’s maternal and child population. The group, hosted by the N.C. Division of Public Health, was facilitated by the National Maternal and Child Health Workforce Development Center, which is based in UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Department of Maternal and Child Health, and by FSG,  a consulting firm for leaders in search of large-scale, sustainable social change.

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Public agency leaders and community partners gathered in Raleigh, N.C., recently to plan ways to improve the health of North Carolina’s women and children.

The meeting brought together local and regional teams of local health directors and staff members, family leaders, hospital executives, health-care providers and other partners engaged in the health of women, infants, children and families. The group made plans for collective impact initiatives and discussed existing efforts to improve North Carolina’s birth outcomes, improve the overall health status of children ages birth to five, and lower the state’s infant mortality rate.

“The complexity and challenges that face communities in their efforts to improve the health of women of childbearing age and of children ages birth to five years can be overwhelming,” said Dorothy Cilenti, DrPH, clinical assistant professor of maternal and child health at the UNC Gillings School and director of the workforce development center. “Collaboration between community organizations, local health departments and other key stakeholders can lead to long-term systematic change. Collective impact is an effective means of collaboration and is a proven approach for helping organizations work together.”

Dr. Dorothy Cilenti

Dr. Dorothy Cilenti

State and local public health programs historically have excelled at collaboration and convening partners to address challenging problems, Cilenti noted. Collective impact provides an organizing framework, vocabulary, tools, measurement guidance and an intentional way to use collaboration to make change. For those who are ready, collective impact offers a way to move beyond collaboration to full-scale, integrated change efforts. Collective impact also provides a framework for state agencies to support local collective impact initiatives.

Many participants volunteered their positive assessments of the workshop, saying that the experience was beneficial in building community partnerships and addressing complex problems. Evaluations collected from participants outlined the applicability and usefulness of the materials in their everyday work lives and noted that participants planned to apply what they had learned in their respective programs and agencies.

The National MCH Workforce Development Center, funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration, works in partnership with states and territories to:

  • Shift the emphasis of health care from disease management to prevention and population health management, while improving access to affordable health care;
  • Develop an interprofessional/interdisciplinary approach to health care;
  • Integrate primary care, specialty care and public health;
  • Develop efficient health systems that better incorporate ongoing quality improvement; and
  • Drive partnerships across sectors to optimize the wellbeing of maternal and child health populations.


Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu
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