Friday Sem Replacement Activities

Week of January 27th

Activity: Presentation for HHS Staff “Affordable Care Act and You”

Mayra Alvarez, Director of Public Health Policy (Office of Health Reform) gave a presentation on the new health care law (ACA) including an overview of ACA, goals of the law, potential benefits and HHS progress on implementation.

Week of February 3rd

Activity: Presentation on the Mobile Health Map Project (www.mobilehealthmap.org)
January 31st 2-3pm at HRSA

Jennifer Bennet, ED of The Family Van in Boston, MA/Co-Investigator of Mobile Health Map gave a presentation on the role of mobile health in urban and rural areas, including challenges for mobile health units (logistics, funding, staffing, snowbanks) and unique successes (provide an unintimidating access point into the healthcare system, convenient, can go to where the need is). She also discussed collaborations between The Family Van and FQHCs/EDs in the Boston area and its impact in terms of financial and health outcome successes.

The goal of the Mobile Health Map project is to create an innovative method for assessing the benefit and impact of mobile health units on healthcare in the areas that they serve as well as a creating a tool for nationwide collaboration between mobile health units, many of which operate in isolation.

Week of February 10th

Activity: Webinar/Teleconference “Output vs. Outcomes”
February 8th 3-4:30pm

Bethany Adams, MHA, CHE, Mountain States Group gave a presentation to the State Office of Rural Health Directors on the importance of understanding the difference between output (project contract deliverables) and outcomes (expected impact from the intervention) when conducting quality improvement projects. She gave suggestions for documentation and for using indicators to monitor performance improvement gains.