Hancock County Coalition for Community Health

April 25, 2001

Workgroup

Present: Colleen Minier—MCMH HealthLink, Gayle Gaynor – MDI CHP Coordinator, Doug Michael, MDI CPD, Barbara Peppey-- Healthy Peninsula CPD, Mary Jane Bush-- Bucksport CHAC, Susan Berry – Bucksport SHC, Jim Fisher – HCPC, Sandy Phoenix – PATH, Kim Horton – BHMH Health Education Center, Vyvyenne Ritchie – Downeast Health Services, Kathi Teel – Healthy Island SHC, Andrea Mason, MCD, Helena Peterson – Ellsworth/Bucksport CPD

Meeting process – Helena did just-in-time (JIT) training on consensus, roles, the 7-step meeting process, and ground rules. The group decided to adopt this process for today as a trial.

1. Grounding – All members had an opportunity to speak and share their readiness.

2. Roles – For today, Jim will act as leader, Andrea as facilitator, Helena as recorder, and Jim as timekeeper.

3. Agenda Review – There was concern that the time limits of the agenda might be too restrictive. The group agreed to modify the time limits as needed throughout the meeting to ensure adequate discussion of pertinent issues. There was also concern about which comes first: the big picture of public health or the "nuts and bolts" structure of the organization. The group decided to proceed with the development of organizational structure and to return to broader themes at a later date, or as they came up in discussion.

4. Work through agenda items:

1. Mission – The mission task force (Vyvyenne, Mary Jane, Jim and Helena) presented the draft mission statement. Some people felt that we needed to spend more time on it – some groups evolve their mission over years. Do we even know who we are? What is the "healthy communities model?" We need to better define this for the public. What makes this mission different from that of the individual coalitions? The second half of the statement helps to answer this question, but might not be appropriate for a public mission statement. After discussion, it was decided to proceed with a provisional mission statement, and continue to design it. The group reached consensus that: members will email their suggestions to the task force, and the task force will reconvene to make revisions to the 2^nd half of the statement. Jim will post the top half of the statement on the website as "provisional."

• Assessment and research to identify common needs and resources,
• Communication regarding educational programs and awareness activities, and
• County-wide health planning

1. Relationship with grantees – This sparked vigorous discussion, with all members having an opportunity to speak. Some of the themes were: Grantees are separate organizations, with their separate cultures, mission, and direction. We all take direction from our organizations, and (hopefully) from our communities. There is a conflict between the broad bottom-up development of a health community coalition, and the "top-down" prescriptive requirements of the grants. How do we balance our responsibilities? The grants should be considered a tool that we will use to build something larger – a coalition that will be the foundation of a public health system that is responsive to the needs of the people.

Is this organization just made up of tobacco grantees? Shouldn’t our relationship diagram show individual circles for organizations, and not just their relationship under the grant. There was general agreement that we are much more than just our relationships under the grant, and individual organizations are equal members. For example, the grant directors should not be doing planning without the knowledge of the other organizational members. We agreed that we would be conducting joint planning as a group.

Should we (as staffers) be around this table, or should it be the community members? The group felt that, at least for the present, we represent the interested parties who are willing to work to develop the community involvement. We are all seeking the advisory input from our communities – some of us are just much further along than others. We will be looking for more active community participation. We are a part of a simultaneous process, with several groups developing. Existing groups are also looking to reach out and make other connections as appropriate. We will also be working with a variety of other grants in the future.

The BIG PICTURE = 2010. What’s missing now is having the community embrace these goals, to be fully engaged. We are looking to coordinate this development. Assessment will drive lots of things. What is public health? Is this model legitimate? Individual ideas may coalesce into county level actions.

Our biggest conflict is our relationship with the grant itself, not with the grantees. The grant provides the seed money to create HCC’s but there are expectations of us because of the grant money that are not truly HCC activity. However, we now have a letter from the BOH supporting the HCC model.

PROPOSAL: It was proposed that we not talk about the grant in this meeting, but discuss healthy community development and providing technical assistance to each other. After more discussion and modification: the group reached consensus that we will divide the agenda into two parts: the healthy community part and a standing agenda item called "common grant activities." This will help us to focus and separate the two.

2. Assessment – Jim reported on methods used to conduct the Bucksport assessment and to create the Health Plan. Much data are available from many different sources. Again, there is a conflict between what people are interested in locally and what the state (or federal government) expects in data collection. Jim’s goal is to compile and package information into a user-friendly format.

Self-reporting surveys have a bad reputation, even if done well. The studies are often hard to do and expensive. "The ideal result is not a document, but people committed to action."

Bucksport had 6 focus groups, and their data were not presented until the second meeting. All felt it was important, wanted more, and were shocked by some items.

Jim described the tension between validity (of local importance) and reliability (reproducible results are of importance to the state.) He is willing to try and do both, with data broken out at the town level. Proposal: Jim is to use the Bucksport model to collect data for us. The group reached consensus on this.

The wisest use of Jim’s time was also discussed. He has 300 hours/year for the grantees, which is roughly 6 hours a week, although some of his other planning activities will also be helpful to us without being charged to our budgets. Proposal: Half of Jim’s time should be spent with individual grantees and half with Hancock County Coalition. The group reached consensus on this.

Proposal: An evaluation subcommittee should be formed to address assessment and evaluation. Members would come from each service area. They would help to manage requests for Jim’s time. The group reached consensus on this.

3. Committees – The group feels a need to get some working groups going, at the same time wants to streamline the structure at the outset, allowing for dynamic development when needed. Various task forces were considered. The need for a possible future team on youth was discussed, with the understanding that the YAP’s must originate in the youth population, and that we will need to commit resources to this process at a future point. ACTION: Directors will add to their next agenda.

The group reached consensus that our task forces will be:

Evaluation (as above)

Education – will handle programming, PR, and maintain a youth focus. Committee consists of : Kathy Teel, Colleen Minier, Kim Horton, Gayle Gaynor, Iris Simon, Susan Berry, Jenny Gott, Sandy Phoenix, Helena Peterson and Andrea Mason. First meeting will be Tuesday May 1 at 9am at Healthlink.

4. Projects –

Healthy Eating Out is being planned. Costs will be marketing and cost of inserts. The directors need more information on this.

Smokeless Saturdays are postponed until training is available in August.

After these two projects, the new projects will be the efforts of the new education task force. Upcoming: Tour the Countries will be our first county-wide project.

5. Meeting Record -- The group deferred the read-back of the minutes. Helena will email and everyone can send back corrections.
6. Next meeting date and agenda – The next meeting will be May 9, 12-1:30 at Healthlink. The June meeting will be June 6^th at Healthlink 12-1:30. Vyvyenne and Andrea are excused. Agenda items will include: review of revisions to the mission statement, membership and leadership of the HCCCH, and common grant activities.
7. Evaluation of the meeting – Process helpful. The website is crawling along – send Jim info in Word for posting. Some of us want the education task force up and running quickly! This was a respectful process, with everyone being heard. Next time we need a scribe and a facilitator, too much for one person to keep up with. Everybody’s voice mattered. I learned a lot! The grant is just a tool to accomplish a bigger job. The emphasis on youth was "way cool" Our planning was theoretical – now we’re getting some clarity and movement. We are developing a path in the confusion.