New Mexico fosters established family and consumer partnerships and continues to seek out new partnerships. Our partner agencies and advocacy groups represent families and family-consumer partnerships formed before and during the ongoing Needs Assessment process. These partnerships, some of which go back many years, help our programs understand if Title V efforts resonate with the people that we serve and reflect the diversity of communities. These relationships allow us to obtain public input on Title V and make sure our resources are used to make changes that are right for New Mexico families.

Maternal Health

Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC):  The Committee’s Core Planning Group is actively seeking committee membership that will reflect community-based organizations (e.g., home visiting, parent support), health equity/birth advocacy persons and persons with “lived experience” in maternal mortality or morbidity events. New committee members bring direct connections and insight to the experiences of families impacted by maternal and birthing disparities. A state representative, who is also a policy director for Bold Futures, joined in August 2020 after a very lengthy vetting process. Another new member from the UNM Center for Development and Disability is the clinical director for the Nurse-Family Partnership. She will be a great asset to home visiting population and family voice connections. Three additional committee members will be selected to fill newly-created seats representing community groups, therapeutic communities and health and birth equity voices.

Zero to Three: This work, prompted by a national effort and led by the Human Services Department (HSD), focuses on provision of adequate services to address the maternal and infant mental health needs (dyadic approaches) in primary and behavioral health settings.  The core membership in this group includes staff from HSD, DOH and the state Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD). Periodically, this committee holds focus groups with clients/families to gauge the acceptance and effectiveness of services.

Midwifery Licensing: The state Maternal Health Program manages the licensing of two midwife groups in the state, the certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) and the licensed midwives (LMs). Both groups have Advisory Boards that meet quarterly. In both boards there are two or three members from the consumer sector (individuals who have used a midwife in their birthing care.) The input from these members is highly valued to inform midwifery practice policy and initiatives in the state.

Perinatal Health

Maternal Child Health Epidemiology staff hold PRAMS and HUGS (Helping Us Grow/ PRAMS 2) steering committee meetings with a variety of advocates 3-4 times a year, and although the committee is academic, policy/advocacy and health or birth worker heavy, all these partners help connect us to important decisions regarding use of the surveys and policy applications to improve perinatal health.

Child Health

The Child Health Program’s Acting Child Health Manager/MCH Health Educator provides training to many partners throughout the state, including community-based programs, childcare centers, home visitors, and other early childhood providers.  Trainings cover multiple topics, but primarily focus on the administration and scoring of the Ages & Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) and ASQ: Social Emotional (ASQ:SE) screening tools and safe sleep/shaken baby prevention. We know this is what the direct-service providers want/need because they continue to ask for these trainings, and several have requested that the Acting Child Health Manager/MCH Health Educator create topic-specific trainings for them -- for example, how home visitors can address opioid use with the moms they visit and more information about adverse childhood experiences. Recently, a professor from the nursing program at Carrington College called to request developmental screening training for her nursing students.

The Acting Child Health Manager/ MCH Health Educator attends health fairs, conferences, symposiums, and community family events that allow her to promote and raise awareness of the programs and activities of the Family Health Bureau. These events serve as outreach, promotion, and networking opportunities. Through them, new community partners are reached, trainings are advertised and scheduled, and educational materials are provided. The anecdotal feedback around the materials provided is always positive, so we know this is serving the population of families with young children well. Many times, families will come back to get more resources for their friends and relatives who also have young children.

Another activity the Child Health program leads is the ECCS-AE State Team (Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems-Act Early). This team is an open-membership group of direct-service providers, representatives of advocacy groups, parents, grandparents, and state agency employees who are interested in improving developmental monitoring, screening, and referral of children ages birth-8, for both physical and social-emotional delays. These stakeholders represent the diverse interests of the early childhood community and help drive the State Team priorities and project goals.

Additionally, the Acting Child Health Program Manager/ MCH Health Educator participates in the J Paul Taylor Early Childhood Task Force, the New Mexico Birth Equity Collaborative, Maternal & Child Health Workgroup-Pritzker Children's Initiative, PED Statewide Advisory Committee, March of Dimes MCH Advocacy Committee, Bernalillo County Community Health Council, Bernalillo County Home Visitation Workgroup,) and the PRAMS/PRAMS-2 Steering Committee. Participation in these various statewide groups allows the Acting Child Health Program Manager/ MCH Health Educator to Support NM families and identify opportunities to interact directly with them.

Adolescent Health

The Office of Adolescent Health (OSAH) believes youth and partner voices are vital for program quality improvement.  The NM Adolescent & Young Adult Health (AYAH) Collaborative Improvement & Innovation Network (CoIIN), which consists of member from Title V Maternal & Child Health, Apex Evaluation, Albuquerque Public Schools, Programs for Adolescents, the University of New Mexico and other partners, are working together to improve and infuse key stakeholder input into the implementation and evaluation of the NM Youth Peer to Peer Helper (YP2PH) Program. OSAH funds approximately 40 program sites statewide.

Through our NM Youth Peer to Peer Helper Program, we have incorporated life skills and youth voice by empowering the peer helpers to 1)  decide on what health promotion and service learning projects they will implement based on the needs of their school or community, 2) evaluate the health promotion & service learning projects (pros and deltas), 3) share stories about how they have helped someone, and 4) tell us why they think they are better off for being in this program. Sponsors voice is incorporated via an end of year survey and within the mid/final report.  Currently, the AYAH CoIIN team is working on developing a parent and principal survey, to get their feedback and continue to improve the quality of the program by promoting the positive youth development approach.

Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs

Children's Medical Services receives input from both clients and families themselves and from family organizations.  The program has a family-centered and patient-centered approach to care coordination, including involving youth in transition planning for the state Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) Program. CMS makes direct referrals to family support organizations for family-to-family connections. This includes referrals to Parents Reaching Out (PRO), Education of Parents of Indian Children with Special Needs (EPICS), the family liaisons from the NM School for the Deaf (NMSD), and family guides through Hands & Voices for children that are deaf or hard of hearing. The Cleft Palate clinics employ a family support agent who is available to families during the clinic. CMS sustains family participation in the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Collaborative, NM Interagency Coordinating Council (ICC), and the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) stakeholder committee.

CMS staff participate in the Mountain States Regional Genetics Advisory Committee, which includes the CMS NBG program, CMS Statewide Manager, Parents Reaching Out, Family Voices, the Navajo Nation Family Voices, the UNMH Genetics program, the UNMH Office of Telehealth and several other parents who have children with genetic conditions with a mutual goal to improve genetic services to families in rural and underserved areas. The New Mexico team sponsored a Genetic Pop up event on Rare Disease Day in the Northwest region to help provide education and support to families who have a child with a genetic condition.

Family Organizations are invited to provide input into the CYSHCN Program activities and the Title V Block Grant during scheduled MCH Collaborative meetings and the other named stakeholder meetings. CMS contracts with and provides funding to family organizations to ensure that families who have children with special needs have input into programming and serve in an advisory role regarding policy. The funding also supports family participation in local, state and national conferences and provides training for staff/families.

Funds from the CMS program support an annual family leadership conference sponsored by EPICS and PRO where over 400 families who have children with special needs gain new skills, support and resources. Each agency holds their own family leadership conference and a diverse contingency of parents attend.   Susan Chacon, the CMS Program Manager, participates as a member of the stakeholder committee for the National Parent and Professional Partnership organization through Family Voices to provide input into program goals and objectives.