In Delaware, the majority of Title V block grant funding is used to support approximately 13.25 positions (FTEs) across the division that are involved with MCH programs and services, including Child Development Watch, adolescent health, home visiting, health education, and primary care. In this way, Title V funding has historically been leveraged to bolster the capacity of many DPH programs that serve mothers, children, adolescents, children and youth with special health care needs and their families.  The majority of these positions do not report directly to the Title V program, but rather to the administrator of the specific program or clinic that they work within.

To maximize the reach and impact of these funds, we rely heavily on collaboration and coordination with a variety of other agencies, coalitions, and partners with shared goals.  These partnerships are described in more detail in the Needs Assessment Summary section, III.C.2.b.ii. of our FY21 application.

The MCH leadership team has a significant amount of professional experience, and all staff have been in their roles for at least three years.  Elizabeth Orndorff is our most recent hire in August 2019 as our new Title V Block Grant Coordinator.  Elizabeth also serves as our State Systems Development Initiative (SSDI) Project Director.  Isabel Rivera-Green, MSW, has been serving as the Director of Children & Youth with Special Health Care Needs since September 2018.  Before this role, Isabel was also in the MCH unit as the Early Hearing Detection Intervention (EHDI) Coordinator from October 2015 until she was hired as the CYSHCN Director. 

In addition, Leah Woodall, MPA, the state MCH Director for Delaware and Section Chief for the Family Health Systems Section, is in her tenth year serving in these capacities, having previously served as the MCH Bureau Chief and Deputy Director for three years.  Crystal Sherman has served in the role of MCH Bureau Chief and Title V Deputy Director since October 2015. 

The strengths of the MCH leadership and core team lie in our depth of professional experience, educational background, and passion for the work.  However, professional development is an ongoing process to ensure staff have the tools needed to perform all job functions with the highest level of execution.  We have utilized a variety of training platforms for professional development including the MCH Navigator, FranklinCovey and our internal DPH training office.   

All MCH staff are encouraged to utilize the MCH Self-Assessment tool as a guide to develop their professional development goals annually.  Supervisors are tasked with reviewing and coaching staff on the development of their goals and ensuring time is allotted for professional development. Leadership meets regularly to discuss strengths of staff to ensure we continue to recruit team members that have the skills that are needed as well as complement the section.   

In October 2018, 30 staff members from administrative to leadership roles, participated in a two-day training on FranklinCovey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Our workforce gained hands on experience, applying timeless principles that yielded greater productivity, improved communication, strengthened relationships, increased influence, and laser-like focus on critical priorities. 

The training was very interactive and involved role playing so participants could put what they were learning into practice.  The 7 Habits Objectives during this training included habits like:

• Paradigms and Principles of Effectiveness
• Be Proactive
• Begin with the End in Mind
• Put First Things First
• Private Victory to Public Victory
• Think Win-Win
• Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the Saw
• Living the 7 Habits

All MCH have access to an All Access Pass to the entire FranklinCovey Library which provides a refresher of all the habits along with several other topics important to leadership.  The All Access Pass was designed to help organizations achieve strategic initiatives, develop leaders, and build skills and capabilities across the organization in a completely nimble and flexible way that helps them overcome those challenges - all at the very best value.  With access to FranklinCovey courses, assessments, videos, tools, and digital assets, we can utilize the content in a wide variety of ways and across multiple delivery modalities to best meet the needs of our organization.  The All Access Pass includes courses such as: The 4 Essential Roles of Leadership; Managing Millennials; Presentation Advantage; Find Out WHY: The Key to Successful Innovation, and more.  All courses are offered in formats that are convenient to participants and on a schedule that is most convenient to them. 

In the last couple of years, we provided an opportunity to participate in the following FranklinCovey resources :

• The 5 Choices – Course Summary: Learn a process which will dramatically increase their ability to achieve life’s most important outcomes. Backed by science and years of experience, this course will make you more productive and give you an inner sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. This time and life management workshop will help you make the right choices as you plan your day, week, and life, by aligning tasks with your most important goals. You will move from being buried alive to being extraordinarily productive!

• Implicit Bias – Course Summary: Bias is a natural part of the human condition—of how the brain works. And it affects how we make decisions, engage with others, and respond to various situations and circumstances, often limiting potential. There is nothing more fundamental to performance than how we see and treat each other as human beings.
• Change Management Model – Course Summary: Although we all can change our behavior, we rarely ever do. As you understand the change model, you can help people work through short-term turbulence so they can get to longer-term benefits of the change.
• 6 Critical Practices – Course Summary:  This program was developed to equip first-level leaders with the essential skills and tools to get work done with and through other people. The program is ideal for new first-level leaders who need to transition successfully from individual contributors to leaders of others. However, this program also applies to leaders who have been in their roles for some time and are looking for practical and relevant guidance on how to effectively lead and manage their teams. 

This past year, we offered two essential roles of leadership courses, “Create a Shared Vision” and “Strategy and Execute Your Team’s Strategy and Goals”.  Both trainings were provided in ½ day in person off site training center.  These trainings were selected as we are kicking off strategic planning for the Family Health Systems sections and the Bureaus within the Section and we want all team members to be active participants in the process.

Training and development of our workforce is one part of a comprehensive strategy to improve the competence of, and services delivered by the Delaware Division of Public Health (DPH).  Fundamental to this work is identifying gaps in knowledge, skills, and abilities through the assessment of the employee’s individual needs and addressing those gaps through targeted training and development opportunities.

It’s important to note that not all learning occurs in a classroom or on an electronic device.  Learning can be as simple as a supervisor observing an employee performing a task and offering suggestions on how to improve that performance (i.e. on-the-job training).  It can occur during staff, one-on-one, and, performance feedback meetings, or by reading an article in a professional periodical and putting the concepts to work on the job.  All supervisors at the DPH are encouraged to and can facilitate learning by adding a Professional Development section to employees’ Performance Plans.  Working together on this will help employees focus on his/her training goals and establish a more productive working relationship.  To keep track of this, employees can use the DPH Personal/Professional Development Plan, as a tool to help them and their supervisors, develop goals and document uniquely tailored training needs and experiential learning exercises to expand their knowledge, skills and abilities to provide the best service possible to the citizens of Delaware.

Additionally, internal DPH workforce development opportunities include our Office of Performance Management, which has created a comprehensive workforce development plan outlining DPH training goals and objectives, as well as resources, roles and responsibilities related to the plan’s implementation.  With regard to specialized cultural and linguistic competency training, DPH offers in-house training opportunities.  In addition, DPH offers training opportunities through a collaborative agreement with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Mid-Atlantic Public Health Training Center.

As part of the Governor’s Trauma-Informed Care initiative, DHSS required every employee complete the online course titled: DHSS Trauma Informed Awareness Training.  This training is also part of the new employee/supervisor curricula for future new hires.  DHSS Trauma Informed Awareness Training examines the pervasive effects trauma has on individuals, families and organizations.  Trauma results from many experiences such as an event, a series of events or a set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects.  Many DPH programs are considered trauma informed, some sections have no idea about the impacts of trauma on our clients, patients and co-workers, therefore, the Governor’s initiative is that we all become trauma aware.

DPH staff are also afforded the opportunity to advance their skills through the DE TRAIN Learning Network.  DE TRAIN is an affiliate of the TRAIN national learning network that provides quality-training opportunities for professionals who protect and improve Delaware’s public health.  This is a free service funded by Delaware Public Health’s Emergency Medical Services and Preparedness Section (EMSPS) in partnership with the Public Health Foundation Training.

DPH Policy Memorandum Number 65 outlines the Health Equity and Cultural Competency Policy for the Division of Public Health.  The purpose of the policy states that DPH’s policies, processes, programs, services, interventions, and materials will be provided in a manner that considers the social and cultural and linguistic characteristics of the population we serve and strive to improve health equity as outlined in Title VI of the Civil Rights Action of 1964.  The policy gives direction to when all DPH employees must complete health equity and cultural competency training courses. 

The Division of Public Health released a Second Edition Health Equity Guide for Public Health Practitioners and Partners in November 2019.  This guide will help support our work around the social determinants of health and will be a valuable resource to enhance our collec­tive work to move upstream to improve the conditions that create not only health, but also the inequities related to health. 

Delaware’s MCH program does not include parents or family members who fill staff positions in our department, and we do not have a dedicated staff member to focus on evaluation, data-analysis, or epidemiology.  To fill this gap, we have a contractual relationship with JSI and Forward Consultants to provide this level of support.  In addition, we are pleased to have a CDC MCH Epidemiology assignee, Khaleel Hussaini who came aboard in May 2016 and is still with us in Delaware.  He brings a wealth of MCH experience primarily from his leadership roles at the Department of Health in Arizona. 

Khaleel S. Hussaini is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Maternal and Child Health Epidemiologist (MCH) assignee to DPH.  In addition to his routine analyses of quantitative and qualitative population health data available at DPH to support MCH Block Grant, and other program initiatives and evaluation, Dr. Hussaini provides scientific and technical assistance to Division staff and stakeholders in the areas of maternal and child health outcomes, development of surveillance databases, and integration of technologies.  Dr. Hussaini’s work plan and projects are contingent upon DPH and Title V’s urgent priorities for the upcoming year.